With infrastructure development on a high note in Oman as in the rest of the GCC region, Oman Cement Company (OCC) has expanded production capacity from time to time and is set for another major capacity upgrade.

It will produce an additional 1.3 million tonnes annually of clinker by the end of 2009 following a contract signed recently with CNBMEC, the abbreviation for China National Building Materials Equipment Corporation.
The expanded capacity will target export markets for both grey Portland cement and the specialised oilwell cement.
At the time the latest contract was signed, OCC had a clinker capacity of 1.2 million tonnes per year and an annual cement grinding capacity of 2.6 million tonnes.
Aiding the production process is a captive gas-fired power plant of 30 MW supplied by Bharat Heavy Electricals of India.
An overwhelming portion of clinker and cement produced by OCC is delivered for Oman projects
The company reported that for the first half of 2008 it produced 577,000 tonnes of clinker and exported nothing. Production for the whole of 2007 was 1.15 million tonnes.  In first-half 2008 cement production totalled 961,563 tonnes with as much as 921,682 tonnes being utised for Oman projects and the remainder exported.
For the whole of 2007, cement production was 1.86 million tonnes with local sales and exports at 1.78 million tonnes and 91,251 tonnes respectively.
The company, whose production facilities are at Rusayl, near Muscat city, made a net profit of  RO10.7 million ($27.7 million) in the first nine months of 2008 against RO13.5 million in the same period of the previous year, Revenues were RO44.4 million compared with RO38.5 million in the corresponding period of 2007.
Net profit for the whole of 2007 was RO17.2 million 
OCC had been forced to establish “export” markets in order to operate at full capacity and reap the economic benefits of higher volumes, a company statement said.
 The major export markets where the brand has been established are the UAE, Yemen, Eritrea, Zanzibar, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Libya, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Turkmenistan, India and Pakistan.
“The fact that OCC has been successful in beating competition from much larger regional producers and tackling ‘dumping’ of cement in the local market without any government support is clear indication that the company is geared to meeting the challenges in cement marketing,” it said.
OCC manufactures ordinary Portland cement, sulphate resistant cement and oil well cement (OWC).
The company began manufacturing OWC in 2001 for sales to crude oil producers to cement oil wells and says it has been successful in serving a number of markets.
Discussing the cement industry in the Gulf, OCC says there has been a spurt in demand because of feverish activity to build the economic “infrastructure” for improving the quality of life and laying the foundations for increasing non-oil revenues.
 “For example, nearly $22-30 billion of project investment in the next five years in Oman and the neighbouring United Arab Emirates (two contiguous economies) for roads, power, water desalination, fertiliser, petrochemicals and tourism will result in a shortage of 4/5 million tonnes per annum of cement in the region,” it said in an analysis at the end of the first half of 2008. “Already this ‘shortage’ has led to long waiting lines of trucks outside all cement plants of the region.”
Oman Cement Company owns 58.4 per cent of Sohar Praton Products Company which is engaged in manufacturing precast readymixed concrete products.