The Thapars have incurred a loss of Rs 8 crore as a result of the sale of their 50 per cent equity in Thapar Dupont the joint venture which was set up to manufacture nylon 6,6 in the country.
The Thapars who had already invested Rs 50 crore in the equity of the project, have received Rs 42 crore for the sale of the equity.
L M Thapar, chairman of the group said "when we got into the project we have made some assumptions on the return that we would get on our investment".
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Thapar added "as a result of the delay in the project the returns did not fructify and we found it better to sell our equity as in any case the project for us was merely an investment and the day to day affairs of the project were being looked after by DuPont".
Dupont has already applied to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to up their equity in the project to 100 per cent and have also streamlined the size of the project which was in the tune of $200 million, for the time being.
Instead of setting up both the fibre manufacturing as well as the fabric unit DuPont has decided to go in for setting up the fabric unit which is expected to be commissioned by the end of 1997.
The company has already made commitments to its suppliers to offer the fabric next year.
For the time being, the fibre would be imported and the company is looking at Japan and Indonesia were it has plants which would supply the product in to the Indian operations.
The project has seen numerous ups and downs when environmental problems forced the project to be shifted from Goa to Tamil Nadu.
The joint venture got stuck again when the Thapars made it clear to Dupont that they did not have the funds to match their equity needs.
The two partners had looked at various permutations and combinations which included going in for a public issue for 25 per cent of the equity which would reduce the equity of the partners to around 36.2 per cent each.
However, even this plan was given up and the Thapars decided to hawk their equity.