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On the inaugural day of the ‘Make in Odisha’ conclave, its biggest showpiece event, the state government said it got investment intentions in excess of Rs 60,000 crore.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said he’d had a one-on-one interaction with 19 major investors who’d expressed interest to invest. Many existing investors — Tata, Adani, Aditya Birla, ITC, Vedanta — spelt out fresh investments.
Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani committed new investment of Rs 15,000 crore on a slew of projects, promising net employment for 10,000 people. The money would go into expanding the capacity of Dhamra port, with additional terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). An LNG terminal with 5.2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) capacity is coming up there, for Rs 5,200 crore. The LPG terminal is planned at an investment of Rs 2,300 crore.
Adani Wilmar would be setting up a 2,500 tonne per annum edible oil refinery at Dhamra port, for Rs 2,300 crore. Crude oil for this would be sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia. Adani added: “By March 2017, we would be adding another berth at Dhamra, taking the port capacity to 50 mtpa. We are also setting up a two mtpa barge berth to facilitate coastal movement of coal through National Waterway-5.”
Vedanta group chairman Anil Agarwal says they’ve lined Rs 20,000 crore of investment over the next three years. Of this, Rs 12,000 crore is proposed to be invested on the Lanjigarh alumina refinery, to raise its capacity from two mtpa to five mtpa, and to remove bottlenecks at its smelting unit in Jharsuguda. The capacity of the smelter is to be expanded to two mtpa, from 1.7 mtpa. However, bauxite supplies to the Lanjigarh refinery is a key ingredient to facilitate this investment. The other Rs 8,000 crore investment would be made on a ‘world class university’ at Puri, where Agarwal intends to develop an Education City.
Tata Steel said it proposed to invest Rs 15,000 crore to scale up capacity at its Kalinganagar (Jajpur district) plant to eight mtpa, from three mtpa now.
“We will take the approval of the board (of directors) in six months. Investments worth Rs 3,000 crore are already under various stages of execution,” said T V Narendran, its managing director for India and Southeast Asia.
Terming Odisha a natural selection for industries, Satish Pai, managing director of Aditya Birla Group-owned Hindalco Industries announced Rs 4,000 crore of new investment for the state. These are to go into various companies — capacity addition at Aditya Aluminium’s rolling mill at Hirakud, UltraTech’s cement grinding unit at Jharsuguda, recommencing Essel Mining’s captive mines and expanding the retail footprint of its apparel business.
He said the Group had already invested Rs 30,000 crore in Odisha, of which Rs 27,000 crore had gone into Hindalco’s operations.
S K Poddar’s Adventz Group has committed Rs 9,000 crore on expansion of a urea ammonia unit. He said after taking over of Paradeep Phosphates from the Government of India in 2002, the group had wiped out its previous accumulated loss and turned in a positive net worth of Rs 1,200 crore.
ITC, the foods & hospitality major, said it would invest Rs 800 crore on a five-star hotel under its ‘Welcome’ brand and a food processing plant to be set up on Bhubaneswar’s periphery.
“The hotel would have 110 rooms and give a boost to Odisha’s already dynamic tourism industry. The food processing unit would be a world-class facility. Both are testimony to the enabling business environment and the facilitation Odisha provides,” said Sanjiv Puri, operations head.
Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages announced an investment of Rs 500 crore for the state in the next three years. JSW Steel expressed intent to set up a large steel plant but was quiet on the investment figure. Essar Group chief Shashi Ruia proposed to expand capacity of its Odisha iron ore pellet plant to 12 mtpa and said it would shortly commence mining from the ore block it bagged via auction.
