After putting on hold its plans to start construction of PET Resin manufacturing unit in Egypt following the political tensions, Dhunseri Petro Chem and Tea Ltd has said that it will start the work by June.
“The construction works were delayed for a couple of months due to local factors and is expected to start by June this year,” said C K Dhanuka, Chairman of the company.
The capacity of the plant would be 420,000 tonnes per annum (TPA), with an investment of about $160 million.
The plan to start work was postponed because of the political instability after an uprising in that country, which put an end to the 30-year-old rule of Hosni Mubarak.
Meanwhile, the company has restarted production at its Haldia plant, which was shut down due to a major fire broke out in its raw material godown last week.
“We suffered a loss of Rs 75 crore due to the fire. But the company has insurance coverage and has already applied for it. Manufacturing has started now at the rate of 420 tonnne per day (TPD) and full capacity of 600 TPD is expected to be achieved shortly.,” he said.
At present, capacity of the Haldia plant is 2,00,000 tonnes per annum.
On the other hand, it expects to achieve mechanical completion of Haldia unit-2 project by March 2012.
The total cost of the project will be around Rs 370 crore.
Dhunseri Petrochem is the flagship company of the Dhunseri group.
It was formed with the merger of two manufacturing companies of Dhunseri group – Dhunseri Tea and Industries Ltd which was engaged in tea production and IT infrastructure and South Asian Petrochem Ltd (SAPL) which was into manufacturing of PET resin.
The production of petrochem division under the erstwhile SAPL had reportedly decreased from 1,92,655 tonne in 2008-09 to 1,68,180 tonne in 2009-10.
