Empee group targets Rs 900 crore turnover

The Chennai-based Rs 400 crore Empee group is targetting a group turnover of Rs 900 crore over the next three years.

The group with primary interest in IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor), sugar, power and hotel business is also planning to launch its own brand of table wine by Christmas this year.

The group is planning to capture a 10 per cent share in the southern market over the next three years. During this period, Empee group is planning a product profile shift from economy brands to premium brands in the alcoholic beverages market.

S Subramanian, president, Empee Distilleries Ltd said, "The group has undertaken restructuring exercise which would continue for the next three years. At the end of this period, IMFL would continue to remain our main business. We would also focus on sugar with both backward and forward integration and also make some investments in the bio-mass based power plants."

At present IMFL division contributes around 70 per cent of the group turnover.

Empee Group, is also planning to set up a 100 kl per day grain-based alcohol plants at a cost of Rs 70 crore.

"The inputs would be barley, maize, jowar or tapioca for this new plant. For quality reasons, we believe that future of alcohol is in grain based units and not in molasses," he said.

As part of its growth plans, Empee is also hoping to increase capacity utilisation of its distilleries to 100 per cent from the current 35 per cent. The installed capacity of the group's distilleries seven million cases a year.

On the power front, the group is setting up a 20MW biomass unit in Naidupet in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of Rs 73 crore. The financial closure for this unit is expected to be in December this year.

The group has completely moved out of the beer business after selling its brand and brewery to Millennium Alchobev of the UB Group.

Subramanian said the unlisted Empee Distilleries Ltd could offload some of its stock in the market for additional funds primarily needed for launching premium brands of whisky, brandy, rum and vodka. "A public offering is not imminent. We are considering it as an option," he clarified.

The company is in talks with wine makers in France, Italy, Australia and the US (California). Subramanian said the group would import in bulk, pack and market it as its own brand.

It would be a table wine and targets large volumes in the domestic market. "This offering would be more for occasional drinkers looking for alternatives to hard liquor," he said.