Enabling Superior Construction in Northeast India: Green AAC Blocks

1. The vision of Green AAC Blocks is to make buildings eco-friendly, cost-effective and sustainable. Could you enlighten our readers with how Green AAC blocks are different from the traditionally used red bricks? Also, how would you say your product stands apart from other similar competitors in the market?

In 2014, red brick was the only product available for building walls in Assam. Though it is highly polluting, consumes top fertile soil, and also has high coal consumption, there was no alternative. Eventually, the cost of red bricks was raising due to high labour and coal costs and a limited supply of fertile soil.

AAC blocks have been produced in India for the last 30 years from Fly ash only, which is a fine grey powder produced as a by-product in a coal-fired power plant, with no precedent of sand. Since there was no coal-based power plant in Assam, so there was no possibility of Fly ash. In this situation, it was not economically feasible to make an investment in this sector.

Being a chemical engineer, when I saw the chemical and physical properties of finely powdered Brahmaputra silt, I saw the opportunity that this can replace Fly ash in AAC block as feedstock, this thought led us to our first plant of AAC block in the Northeast. This was the first time in India that AAC block was made from river silt.

Green AAC Block is a technology-based product lead by Engineers. Customer satisfaction is our motto and delivering quality products to the customer through the network of our esteem dealers and channel partners are the marketing philosophy. These two things put us ahead of our competitors.

2. What is the market scenario of AAC blocks in Assam? Do you see a shift in the use of such a product? What has been your marketing strategy to induce the shift from traditional bricks to your kind of blocks?

The market of AAC blocks has been growing steadily in the last 7 years. When we started in 2014, the total manufacturing capacity was 0.15 million cubic meters, today it is nearly 1 million. AAC block has successfully replaced red bricks in all high-rise buildings and the market share of AAC blocks in urban areas is around 40%.

Red bricks and even AAC block in other parts of the country are operating through direct sales to the customers but Green AAC blocks believe in making the product available to customers nearby itself via the network of esteem dealers.

3. Could you tell us the turnover of Green AAC in the last FY? Does Green AAC do CSR?

Last year's turnover of Green AAC Blocks was INR 500 million. Our CSR goes mostly into the construction of public places like temples etc, in nearby rural areas. Apart from that, we also distributed food to needy people during the COVID lockdown. We also contributed INR 11 lacs to Arogya Nidhi during COVID phase 1.

4. How did the pandemic affect your sales and production units? How did you recover from the loss, if any?

COVID has hit the company heavily as we were not allowed to operate the plant for almost 2 months, which resulted in a huge loss due to which our top and bottom lines were affected badly. However, after the first lockdown, Govt of Assam allowed manufacturing units to resume operations, abiding by the COVID restrictions and protocols, helping us by providing all necessary permissions. This helped the company to retain its top and bottom lines. In the current year, we retained all our employees, thus no one lost their job in the company.

5. How do you Vision Green AAC in lieu of the economic growth of the state and henceforth, the entire Northeast? What can be said to be the contribution of Green AAC so far for the economic and industrial development of the state?

Northeast is among the last 5 biodiversity hot spots left on this planet. The economic growth must be in harmony with the environment and green AAC Blocks have been instrumental in saving million metric tons of fertile soil while reducing carbon emission and cleaning the river as well.

Green AAC Block wall making is 3 times faster than the traditional red brick walls because of larger size and low density. Northeast needs economic growth which is also sustainable and in line with the ecology. We never thought that our small step of making AAC blocks eco-friendly will result in saving 250000mt per year of fertile soil. Thus our contribution is way beyond just economical. We are now aiming to not just uplift the economy but also save the environment.

6. Is Anything new brewing under Green AAC for the markets of Northeast?

Green vision is to ensure the quality of an entire construction, in this, regards various products like block jointing mortar, plaster, and wall putty are in the pipeline.