India's Top Construction Machinery Manufacturer
India's Top Construction Machinery Manufacturer
Replacing Imported Tile Adhesive with In-House Production
Location: Surat, Gujarat | Capacity: 32,000 kg/shift (DM-1000) | Plant Type: Dry Mix Mortar Plant | Year: 2022
A Surat-based tile contractor consolidated their procurement by installing a Maruti DM-1000 dry mortar plant to produce tile adhesive in-house — replacing imported premix at 40% lower per-kg cost, with consistent IS 15477 Grade C1 performance.
Surat, Gujarat is one of India's largest tile consumption markets — a function of the city's affluent residential construction sector, commercial real estate activity, and the large number of tile showrooms and distributors operating in the region. A Surat-based tile contractor had built a substantial commercial flooring business serving large-format tile installations in hospitals, malls, corporate campuses, and high-end residential projects across South Gujarat. As the business scaled, their tile adhesive procurement became a growing problem.
The client was purchasing C1-grade tile adhesive at ₹22–24 per kg from imported premix brands. For large commercial installations — 2,000 to 5,000 square metres of flooring per project — adhesive cost is a significant line item. At ₹22–24/kg and 4–5 kg per square metre of coverage, adhesive cost alone runs ₹88–120 per square metre of installation. At their monthly volume of approximately 30 tonnes per shift per working day, the contractor was spending ₹20–25 lakh per month on adhesive procurement.
Two secondary problems compounded the cost issue. First, import lead times: the preferred imported brands carried 4–6 week delivery lead times. On fast-moving commercial projects, this forced the contractor to carry large inventory (8–10 weeks of stock) to avoid supply gaps — tying up working capital. Second, quality consistency: different import shipment batches of nominally identical C1 adhesive showed variation in open time and early adhesion strength, causing occasional tile slippage on vertical surfaces that required rectification — a warranty cost the contractor was absorbing.
The feasibility analysis showed that in-house C1 tile adhesive production at the Surat site was economically compelling at their volume. The DM-1000 (32,000 kg/shift) was the appropriate model — exactly matching daily volume with one-shift operation and leaving headroom for growth or retail bag sales. The brief specified gravimetric batching, recipe management for at least five products, and a 25 kg automatic bagging line for potential retail channel entry.
Maruti Hydraulics' DM-1000 installation in Surat was delivered as a fully turnkey project: civil foundation design, equipment supply, installation, SCADA commissioning, and formulation validation. The plant configuration included SCADA-controlled gravimetric dosing for all six raw material streams — Portland cement, graded sand, redispersible polymer powder, HPMC (hydroxypropyl methylcellulose), calcium formate, and stearate — with ±0.5% dosing accuracy per batch.
The 5,000-litre intensive paddle mixer with a 7-minute batch cycle is sized to produce 32,000 kg per shift in one-shift operation, with time remaining for start-up, cleaning, and batch change procedures. Five product recipes were pre-configured in the SCADA recipe management system before plant handover: C1 standard tile adhesive (conforming to IS 15477), C1 flexible tile adhesive (with increased polymer loading for large-format tiles), C2 heavy-duty adhesive (for exterior and heavy stone applications), white wall putty (POP-based), and AAC block jointing mortar. Recipe changeover is a SCADA screen selection — no physical changes to the plant are needed between product batches.
The 25 kg automatic bagging and stitching station was integrated into the powder discharge conveyor. The bagging system fills, weighs, vibrates, and stitches paper-valve bags automatically at a rate of 300 bags per hour — sufficient to pack the DM-1000's full daily output in one shift. This capacity gives the contractor a retail bagging option without additional capital investment.
Raw material silos were sized for 3-day buffer stock of cement and sand at full production volume. This buffer was specifically designed to absorb supply chain irregularities — a frequent cause of production interruptions in Gujarat's construction materials supply chain during monsoon season when road transport is disrupted.
In-house production cost for C1 tile adhesive settled at ₹13.5 per kg — a 40% reduction versus the ₹22–24/kg import procurement price. This improvement comes from eliminating the import margin, freight, and distributor markup that add 60–70% to the underlying raw material cost of dry mortar products. At 30 tonnes per shift per day and 25 working days per month, the monthly saving versus imported procurement is approximately ₹7.5–10 lakh — exclusive of working capital benefits from eliminating the 8-week inventory buffer.
The plant runs one shift per day, producing the client's full daily flooring project requirement with approximately 30% capacity headroom available for retail 25 kg bag sales or additional project volume. The five pre-configured SCADA recipes allow the contractor to switch between C1 standard, C1 flexible, C2 heavy-duty, wall putty, and block jointing mortar in a single SCADA screen operation — enabling multi-product revenue from the same plant without production scheduling complexity.
Break-even on the DM-1000 investment was achieved within 14 months of commissioning — calculated against the procurement cost saving only, not including the value of the retail bag channel or working capital improvement. The client has since expanded to running retail bag sales through the Surat tile distributor network, adding a revenue stream that did not exist before the in-house plant. This project is a model for tile contractors and construction material distributors across India who have predictable adhesive consumption volumes and are currently purchasing at imported or distributor-marked-up prices.
India's construction materials sector is undergoing a structural shift. Traditional red clay bricks, which dominated Indian construction for decades, are increasingly being replaced by alternative walling materials: AAC (Autoclaved Aerated Concrete) blocks, CLC (Cellular Lightweight Concrete) blocks, and fly ash bricks. The primary drivers are: (1) Supreme Court and National Green Tribunal orders restricting new clay brick kilns near agricultural land and water bodies in multiple Indian states; (2) Green building rating systems (GRIHA, IGBC, LEED India) that award points for alternative walling materials; (3) Energy performance codes under the ECBC (Energy Conservation Building Code) that increasingly specify materials with better thermal mass and lower embodied energy; (4) Construction labour costs rising 8–12% annually, increasing the demand for larger-format blocks that reduce laying time per square metre of wall area; and (5) Real estate developers pursuing RERA compliance and structural quality consistency — both of which favour factory-manufactured uniform blocks over site-mixed materials.
For investors evaluating new construction materials plants, this case study represents a real-world example of the market opportunity — with verified production capacity, commissioning timeline, and operating economics — rather than a theoretical feasibility projection. Every number in this case study comes from an operating plant that Maruti Hydraulics engineers commissioned and handed over to the client team.
Construction machinery projects of this type involve engineering decisions that are not visible in the final product but determine long-term plant reliability and economics. Maruti Hydraulics' engineering approach on this project — as on all projects — prioritises three principles. First, right-sizing the equipment for the specific production capacity and raw material conditions at the site, rather than supplying standard catalogue configurations that may be over-designed (increasing capital cost) or under-designed (limiting scale-up). Second, in-house fabrication of critical components — particularly pressure vessels, structural steel, and control panels — so quality is directly controlled and spare parts are manufactured in India rather than imported. Third, a commissioning approach that measures and documents actual production performance (block density, compressive strength, dimensional tolerance, batch cycle time) before the Maruti Hydraulics engineering team departs, so the client team has baseline data against which to measure plant performance over time.
If you are considering a project in the same product category as this case study, the following conclusions from the Maruti Hydraulics engineering team are relevant. First, raw material quality assessment before equipment sizing is critical — particularly for fly ash-based plants, where ash chemistry (LOI, particle size distribution, pozzolanicity) varies significantly between power stations and even between different storage ponds at the same station. Maruti Hydraulics conducts raw material trials at the Nashik factory before finalising the mix design and equipment specification. Second, plant layout design must account for expansion: even a plant commissioned at 150 CBM/day or 10,000 bricks/shift should be laid out to allow a second production line without major civil reconstruction. Third, SCADA batching and automation significantly reduce operating labour dependency and batch-to-batch quality variation — the incremental cost of SCADA over manual batching is recovered through reduced material wastage and quality rejection rates within 12–18 months in most plants.
If this case study describes a project similar to what you are planning — whether in plant type, capacity range, raw material conditions, or geography — Maruti Hydraulics is your direct contact. The process begins with a technical discussion covering your production target, site conditions, and raw material availability. For most projects, Maruti Hydraulics can provide a preliminary plant layout, equipment list, and indicative quotation within 2–3 business days of receiving basic project details. Reference plant visits to operating customers in the same product category can be arranged for serious investors. All DPR and bank loan documentation support is included at no additional charge for confirmed orders.
Maruti Hydraulics Limited is an ISO 9001:2015 certified manufacturer of AAC block plants, flyash brick machines, dry mortar plants, paver block machines, sandwich panel machines, and Pre-Engineered Buildings (PEB). Founded in 1991 in Nashik, Maharashtra, Maruti Hydraulics has delivered over 200 turnkey construction machinery projects across India and internationally to Nepal, UAE, South Africa, Singapore, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Key differentiators: in-house autoclave fabrication (SAE 516 Gr 70, IBR certified); India's first complete SCADA batching system for AAC plants (2023); first Indian company to commission an AAC plant outside India (Nepal, 2016); and India's largest 1,200 CBM/day AAC plant (2024). Every project is commissioned by a dedicated Maruti Hydraulics engineering team with structured technology transfer to ensure the client operates independently before handover.
Tags: Dry Mortar Plant · Tile Adhesive · Import Substitution · Gujarat
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