Trimex group, a Dubai-headquartered industrial minerals company, will invest Rs 1,200 crore in the next 24 to 30 months in Andhra Pradesh as part of its Rs 4,000-crore expansion planned for the next eight years. The amount will be spent on a new facility for separating minerals from beach sand, to be located at its 14.5 sq km mine at Bhavanapadu in Srikakulam district.
Trimex group chairman Prasad Koneru said here on Friday that the group's first integrated mineral extraction facility, the Srikurmam Mineral Sands Project at Srikurmam in the same district, is to be inaugurated by chief minister K Rosaiah on June 26.
The Rs 250-crore plant will extract, process and produce 200,000 tonne per annum (tpa) of ilmenite, 6,000 tpa of rutile and zircon, 60,000 tpa of garnet and 50,000 tpa of sillimanite. The company also holds a mining licence at Kalingapatnam, part of the same geological Srikakulam placer deposits.
The fully-functional Srikurmam plant will draw sand from the group's 7.2-sq km mine spread along the coastline, for which the company has a 30-year lease extending till 2027.
Trimex group executive director Pradeep Koneru said half of the licenced area was privately owned, for which it would compensate on the basis of crops forgone by the farmers. For the government land, it is required to pay 2.5 per cent of its sales revenue as royalty, he told Business Standard.
He said the company’s operations do not require outright ownership of the land. It would use it only for about six months to one year, after which the land will be returned to the owner with the sand pumped back. The net quantity of sand taken would be 10 to 15 per cent, he said.
The group looks to value addition in the next phase of its operations with Titanium dioxide extraction planned for the next two-three years. It is currently exporting 100 per cent of its production, and feels the need for establishing product quality among its international customers before taking up value addition.
These minerals are used in refractive devices (sillimanite), paper, plastic and paints (titanium dioxide), apart from glass products, artificial gems, aircraft parts, and artificial human joints.
The group’s sales are entirely in open markets, Prasad Koneru said, adding that there was no canvassing with clients. Its revenues were in the range of Rs 15-18 crore per month over the last three months, and its topline this year is expected to be around Rs 200 crore at 65 per cent capacity utilisation. Its debt-equity ratio was 35-65. The group has assets in Congo, the UAE, Kuwait, Indonesia and CIS countries.
