The Hindu Business Line : BILT among suitors for Hindustan Paper

UTI Bank, an advisor on the disinvestment of 74 per cent of the Union government's total equity share in Hindustan Paper Corporation (HPC), is understood to have received good response from private sector investors from within the country and abroad. The response received was based on its advertisement issued in January 2004, inviting expressions of interest (EoI) from bidders for the said percentage of share.

Large domestic paper mills such as Ballarpur Industries Ltd (BILT), West Coast Paper Mills Ltd, JK Paper Ltd, among others, have submitted their EoIs. At one point of time, ITC's paper division was keen on making a bid for HPC's share but finally refrained from doing so as it felt it would be wise to concentrate on its existing line of paperboard and specialty paper business. Incidentally, the last date for submitting EoIs was March 15, 2004.

HPC, with a paid-up capital of about Rs 700 crore (100 per cent owned by the Union government) and net worth of about Rs 580 crore as on March 2002, operates two paper mills in Assam, each with an annual production capacity of 100,000 tonnes of writing and printing paper. These two mills are located at Nagaon and Cachar. This apart, it has a wholly owned subsidiary in Kerala, with a capacity to produce more than 100,000 tonnes of newsprint. The Kerala subsidiary, named Hindustan Newsprint Ltd (HNL), has a de-inking plant.

All the bidders are well entrenched in the area of manufacturing writing and printing paper and specialty paper. All of them have plans to expand production capacity largely through acquisition of operating mills, which is perhaps why they are vying with each other to acquire HPC's controlling equity stake offered for disinvestment.

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