BILT to source pulp from Malaysia, Indonesia

Paper company Ballarpur Industries Ltd (BILT) has zeroed in on Malaysia and Indonesia to set up plantations that will feed pulp to its factories in India.

"We are looking at plantations large enough to feed a pulp mill of 2,000-3,000 tonne per day," BILT chairman Lalit Mohan Thapar said.

BILT had started this exercise of setting up plantations overseas, along with a pulping facility, some time last year. Though it had scanned a number of countries, the final toss-up is going to be between Malaysia and Indonesia.

"We looked at Thailand also but found that all the good sites there have already been taken," Thapar added.

As and when the proposed pulp mill comes up, Bilt could think of producing creamwove paper at its facility at Chaudwar in Orissa, Thapar said.

The Chaudwar facility is lying shut at present.

"The unit is next to a river and coal mines and bang on the port. It is ideal for making paper from imported pulp," Thapar said.

Bilt had acquired the sick unit from the government of Orissa for around Rs 10 crore.

At the moment BILT does not make creamwove paper. But according to Thapar, there is a growing demand from the company's distributors for this kind of paper.

"Most of the final users, like the large printing presses, want to deal with one distributor. This means that the distributor must have a full spectrum of products," Thapar added.

For the time being BILT is planning to outsource creamwove paper. On the company's plan to acquire some creamwove paper facility in the country in order to get a lateral entry into the segment, Thapar said the existing facilities in the country were too small to survive international competition.

"These are baby machines. With a 5-10 per cent duty protection, they cannot survive the onslaught of foreign companies," he said.