The new firm will be called Tokyo Super Aggregate Ltd. and will be set up as a joint venture at a cost of around 220 million rupees, a stock exchange filing said.

Tokyo Cement will be taking a 51 percent equity stake in the joint venture with a local partner Raddella Engineering & Earth Movers (Pvt) Ltd. who has the experience and adequate technical know-how of this highly specialised product, it said.

The new firm will produce “high quality manufactured sand of a consistent quality and good equi-dimensional shape,” it said.

Tokyo Cement said that in the past natural sand extraction has been the backbone of the aggregate industry but is no longer so with new pit locations fewer, further from the market and harder to secure.