The Hindu Business Line : Coromandel Fert plans Rs 40-cr expansion at Vizag

HAVING completed the process for acquisition of Godavari Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd (GFCL) recently, Coromandel Fertilisers Ltd (CFL), part of the Rs 5,266-crore Murugappa Group, is now planning to take up an expansion at its Visakhapatnam facility.

Talking to newspersons here on Thursday, the CFL Director, Mr A. Vellayan, said the expansion project being taken up at an outlay of Rs 40 crore would be completed in the next eight to ten months period.

Through this de-bottlenecking programme, the company proposes to expand the production capacity from the existing two million tonnes to three million tonnes. "In principle clearance has been obtained to expand our capacity at Visakhapatnam to eight lakh tonnes and to put up a 300 tonnes per day sulphuric acid plant," Mr Vellayan said.

The company had installed a modern screw type ship unloader at its Visakhapatnam facility last year at a cost of Rs 16 crore, which is an environment-friendly infrastructure project, Mr Vellayan said. Further, the company is also planning to put in place automation of the bagging and loading systems in the near future, he said.

During the last fiscal, the company transformed itself from a single location fertiliser operation into multi location farm inputs business. Following the merger of the farm inputs division of EID Parry effective April last year, the company's business now comprises both fertilisers and pesticides activities.

At present, the company's fertiliser plants are located at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and Ennore and Ranipet in Tamil Nadu with a combined production capacity of 8.25 lakh tonnes of complex fertilisers and 1.32 lakh tonnes of single super phosphate. The company has a pesticides formulation unit at Ranipet and a technical plant at Navi Mumbai. Following the acquisition of equity in GFCL with it's DAP complex plant at Kakinada, the company has also acquired a scale of significance, he said.

"The fertiliser business of the Murugappa Group has turned more efficient over the last one year as there is a significant synergy in the market place following the merger of farm inputs division and the acquisition of GFCL's equity. The synergy also enabled optimisation of the marketing and product mix between CFL and GFCL," Mr Vellayan said.

Q1 net, sales turnover up

The company has recorded a significant improvement in sales and net profit for the first quarter of the current fiscal ended June 30, 2004.

While the sales turnover has increased to Rs 192.43 crore from Rs 86.01 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal, the company has posted a net profit of Rs 21.01 crore compared to a net loss of Rs 31 lakh. It has received Rs 11.29 crore towards interest on income-tax refund during the quarter under review, which has been included under `other income'.

According to the President, Mr V. Ravichandran, pending announcement by the Government of final rates of concession for complex fertilisers, the income was recognised having regard to the existing concession scheme and according to the management estimate of price concession receivable.

The Chairman, Dr Bharat Ram, has resigned from the board of directors effective Thursday. He served the company as its chairman for 37 years.

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