City-based edible oil major Gokul Refoils and Solvents Ltd has firmed up plans to set up a castor seed crushing plant at Gandhidham in Kutch. With this, the company would enter the castor crushing business.
The company has received approval from the board of directors and has already started work on the plant. “The new plant will have a capacity of 600 tonnes per day (tpd) and the investment will be in the range of Rs 30 crore to Rs 35 crore,” said Kanubhai Thakkar, managing director, Gokul Refoils.
The plant is expected to be operational by November 2009.
The company earlier used to outsource crushing of castor seed from other plants.
Meanwhile, the company’s Haldia refinery commenced trial production in June. The unit has a processing capacity of 1,000 tpd. Gokul is also looking at increasing the capacity of its Kandla refinery by another 500 tpd from the present 800 tpd. “We plan to invest Rs 40-50 crore for the castor plant and Kandla unit’s capacity expansion,” Thakkar stated.
In fact, Gokul is gearing up for a pan-India presence. After entering north eastern states, it is now exploring the possibility of taping southern markets and Maharashtra.
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Apart from the edible oil refinery at Haldia, Gokul has three edible oil refining and processing units at Kandla, Sidhpur and Surat in Gujarat with a total capacity of 1,200 tonnes per day.
The company had also commissioned a 1,500 tpd soyabean plant at Gandhidham last year.