The Hindu Business Line : Man Group, US co to jointly bid for Gujarat alumina project

MAN Group, promoters of Man Industries (India) Ltd, and AluChem of the US are coming together to form a joint venture for setting up a Rs 1,350-crore ($300 million) alumina refinery and specialty alumina chemicals project in the Kutch region of Gujarat.

Last week Ashapura Minechem also announced that it was entering into a joint venture with Sichuan Aostar Aluminium Corporation of China to produce one million tonne alumina.

Both the joint ventures are bidding for the same alumina project of the Gujarat Government, which is due to award the project in a month's time.

The Man Group-AluChem project will be financed through a combination of equity and debt; equity of $100 million (around Rs 462.7 crore) will be shared equally by the two joint venture partners.

For the debt component, the companies are in talks with Global Procurement Consultants Ltd, a subsidiary of Exim Bank. "It is likely to be a foreign currency loan," Mr Ramesh Mansukhani, Chairman, Man Group, said.

In the first phase the proposal, an alumina plant of 500,000 tonnes per annum capacity will be set up to manufacture alumina based chemicals such as lumina trihyderate, thermally reactive alumina, activated alumina, tabular alumina and calcined alumina cement. Once the plant is set up, the plan is to sell 70 per cent of alumina to Dubal of UAE or ALBA of Bahrain. The remaining 30 per cent will be used for value addition.

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