Surya group of companies is planning to invest around Rs 25,000 crore for setting up steel and cement plants along with a power plant in Karnataka. The company said that it was looking at various funding options, one of which could be private equity (PE).
Arvind Bansal, deputy managing director (operations and corporate management), Surya Roshni Ltd, said the company originally planned to set up a steel plant with a capacity of six million tonnes per annum. “Slag, a by-product of steel making, is very difficult to despatch from the proposed steel plant. However, this can be can be used as a raw material for cement. That is how the idea of setting up a cement plant came.” The proposed cement plant would have a capacity of four million tonnes per annum.
To support these two plants, the company was planning to set up a power plant with an initial capacity of 100 Mw. The power would be used for captive purpose, and the surplus would be sold in the market, said Bansal, adding it could take three to four years for the work to commence.
Bansal said, “We are evaluating all the avenues to fund the project, one of which could be PE.”
Besides, the group is o investing Rs 100 crore for pipe and bulb plants in Shimoga district, also in Karnataka. The pipe facility would have a capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum. These are expected to go on stream by the beginning of next fiscal and were likely to generate around Rs 500 crore of revenues in the next two years.
Bansal said the group had set a target to reach Rs 5,000 crore turnover by the end of 2012 from the current around Rs 2,000 crore.
“Our focus and presence, in both the pipe and bulb, has now become regional. We invested Rs 500 crore, recently to set up manufacturing facilities in Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and now in Karanataka. These units will take care of each region and it will give boost to our turnover.”
