Egypt has shut down two of Torah Cement's production lines and filed a case on charges the company damaged the environment, the environment ministry said.

Torah, majority owned by Suez Cement, the country's largest listed company, operates one of the oldest cement plants in the country.

"Despite providing the firm with all technical cooperation to cut emissions and reduce environmental pollution, the firm has continued to violate environmental law and emit pollutants causing hazard to the community," the ministry said in a statement.

The statement did not make clear how large those two closed production lines were.

Torah said in response it had met environmental authorities this week and agreed efforts to cut emissions and slash pollution were on target.

Suez Cement's managing director told Reuters in March the group planned on relocating 2.5 million tonnes of Torah's production capacity to a new, energy-efficient site east of the capital at a cost of more than EGP3 billion ($530 million), in an effort to meet other environmental decrees.

Suez is itself a unit of Italcementi, the world's fifth largest cement group. – Reuters