Adani Wilmar, a Rs 6,000 crore company and owner of Fortune, the edible oil brand, is eyeing aquisitions of greenfield and brownfield assets from companies in central and south India. It plans to invest close to Rs 600 crore in these projects over the next year.
“We are scouting for assets in central and southern India for sunflower, soya and mustard oil projects,” said Atul Chaturvedi, CEO, Adani Wilmar, adding: “We are also planning to invest in new factories that we can build closer to the markets. This helps bring down logistics costs and we can automatically pass on the lower cost benefit to consumers.”
Currently, the company has three port-based facilities and seven crushing units with attached refineries. It plans to double the capacity of its port-based refinery unit at Haldia in West Bengal to 1,600 tonnes a day by December 2009. Total outlay on the project is estimated at Rs 100 crore, including the land acquisition cost.
The move is part of the company’s overall corporate plan to have an oilseed crushing capacity of 10,000 t a day (tpd), a refining capacity of 7,000 tpd, and a total edible oil volume of 2.5 million tonnes (mt) by 2012, nearly double current capacity.
Simultaneously, to capitalise on the demand for agro-commodities, through its fully owned subsidiary, ‘Adani Agri Fresh’, it plans to develop integrated storage, handling and transportation infrastructure for fruits and vegetables. “The project has so far focused on apples. Soon, it would diversify into other products. The fruits and vegetables proposed to be preserved will be apples, bananas, grapes, lime, litchi, mango, mosambi, pineapple, papaya, brinjal, bitter gourd, green chillies, peas, cabbage, cauliflower, ginger and garlic,” said Chaturvedi.
This will enable the company to provide consistent quality of branded fruits and vegetables the year round, under its business-to-business retail brand, 'Farm Pick'. Distribution centres will be set up across India, complemented by its own logistic cold chain.
The company has set up controlled-atmospheric storage units at three locations — Rewali, Sainz and Rohru — in Himachal Pradesh, with a total annual capacity of around 18,000 mt. Each site has been constructed with seven blocks of six chambers, and a total of 42 chambers at each location. The strategy is to concentrate on seasonal products produced far from major consumption centres. This would enable the company to leverage on its logistic strengths, while also taking advantage of controlled atmospheric storage technology to arbitrage on the price differential between peak and off-peak seasons.
