Patna: On September 10, Bihar's "own" cement will hit the market under a different brand name, signifying a rare occasion when a sick industrial unit has been successfully rehabilitated.

Cement giant Dalmia Cement Bharat Limited (DCBL) - the fourth largest cement manufacturing company in India - has taken over Banjari Cement factory located in Rohtas district of Bihar, owned by the erstwhile Kalyanpur Cement Limited. The factory had stopped production about a year ago after running into losses. "The trial production has begun. We were delayed because we have been installing environmental-friendly equipment," Sunil Kumar Gupta, the executive director (manufacturing), east India, told The Telegraph.

The cement factory in Banjari was set up in 1937 and had a long run as one of the leading cement companies in Bihar and Jharkhand. But the company had a slide and by 2001, it became a sick industrial unit. With the Bihar government cancelling its mining lease for limestone, the downfall was even more rapid and production came to a virtual standstill for the past year, as the company was declared bankrupt by National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).

In December 2017, NCLT gave its approval to DBCL to take over the cement factory.

The factory located in Banjari is the only integrated cement factory in Bihar, where limestone is crushed into clinker, the base material for cement manufacturing.

For Dalmia Group, it will be the second integrated cement factory in eastern India and it will aim to supply its products to Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. The other one is in Rajgangpur in Odisha, where the production is six times than that in Banjari.

The revival of the factory means a fresh lease of life for its 1,000 and odd employees, who had not been paid their wages for the past 20 months.

"We have not removed any of the employees. But we do want to introduce the Dalmia culture, so that it can be run more professionally. We have started training programmes for existing employees and posted around two dozen of our own men. The cement will now marketed under the name of Dalmia Cement," Gupta said.

The cement unit factory in Rajgangpur spreads across 550 acres - has a mini town ship with a hospital, a school and a hospital. Dalmia Group declares that it will eventually recreate the facilities for its employees in Banjari.

But company officials point out that the availability of limestone is limited to 10 years if it produced 1.1 million tonnes of cement per year.

If the life of the rejuvenated industry is to extend, the government will have to give fresh areas for limestone mining.