Leading manufacturer of rice bran oil A P Organics will invest Rs 25 crore to set up a new plant and expand its existing facility in Punjab.
"Our present capacity is 350 tonnes per day. We are going to increase the capacity to 600 tonnes per day this year by setting up a new plant near Ludhiana and expanding the capacity of existing facility at Dhuri," the company's Chairman A R Sharma said.
Sharma, a former president of Solvent Extractors' Association (SEA), said the capacity of the new plant would be 100 tonnes, while capacity of the existing plant would be increased to 500 tonnes per day from the current 350 tonnes/day.
"We will invest Rs 25 crore to increase our capacity. The funding will be done through internal accruals and borrowings from banks," he added.
The company posted a turnover of Rs 385 crore in 2007-08, Sharma said, adding that the same is expected to reach Rs 500 crore in the current fiscal.
Sharma, who pioneered the process of physical refining of rice bran oil (RBO) to make edible oil, has been selected for the first national award for research and development in the medium enterprises category — instituted by the Ministry of MSME — to be given on August 30.
Apart from selling directly under 'Ricela' brand, the company is supplying the oil to other brands like Saffola and Sundrop, Sharma said.
He claimed a market share of 20 per cent in the country's rice bran oil production, estimated at 2.5 lakh tonnes.
The country has a potential to produce 12 lakh tonnes of RBO.
Explaining further, he said the availability of rice bran would be much higher if the total rice production is processed, as bran consists of 7.5 per cent of the volume of rice with 15 per cent oil content on an average.
