Guj Ambuja to set up Rs 190 cr power plant

Gujarat Ambuja Cements has earmarked Rs 190 crore for setting up a 60 mw thermal captive power plant at its manufacturing unit in Ambujanagar in Gujarat.

The unit currently draws power from a 54 mw captive power plant based on liquid fuel. The cost of generation has, however, gone up considerably owing to rising furnace oil prices.

A senior company official said, "We are looking at setting up a thermal power plant as furnace oil prices have increased sharply, and are expected to remain volatile."

The plant will be commissioned in two phases with 30 mw operational by February 2006, while the balance capacity will come up by December 2006.

The project will primarily be funded through internal accruals, with a small debt component, the executive said.

Gujarat Ambuja recently announced that it had augmented the capacity at its plants in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. While an additional 6 lakh tonne per annum mill has been set up at Darlaghat (Himachal Pradesh), one million tonne of fresh capacity has been added to its plant in Ropar(Punjab).

With the two mills, the total capacity of the group has increased to 15.5 million tonne per annum. The expansion of the grinding unit at Darlaghat, which cost Rs 50 crore, increased the capacity to 1.6 million tonne per annum. The expansion at the Ropar plant saw the capacity go up to 2.5 million tonne per annum.

Meanwhile, the company has set up a 4 lakh tonne per annum cement mill at its plant at Chandrapur, taking the capacity of the plant to 2.4 million tonne per annum.

Gujarat Ambuja has also announced that it would set up a Rs 100 crore fly ash-based production unit at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, utilising the 3.5 lakh tonne fly-ash generated by the National Thermal Power Corporation.