The Hindu Business Line : Hindustan Paper plans expansion

Looking ahead
To set up a new paper mill in Uttar Pradesh with an annual production capacity of 300,000 tonnes.
To re-open its Tuli paper mill in Nagaland, entailing an investment of about Rs 500 crore.
Expansion programmes would be completed by 2010-11.

Kolkata , April 5

Realising that the return on fresh investment on the manufacturing of paper and newsprint will be reasonably good, the state-owned Hindustan Paper Corporation (HPC) has firmed up a strategy to create additional capacity through brownfield and greenfield expansion.

The corporation has thus decided to set up a new paper mill in Uttar Pradesh with an annual production capacity of 300,000 tonnes of special quality crème wove paper. The project will attract an investment of about Rs 1,250 crore. Along with the greenfield project, it has decided to re-open its Tuli paper mill in Nagaland, entailing an investment of about Rs 500 crore. Production at the Tuli mill has remained suspended for the last 14 years.

Talking about the corporation's future business strategy, the Chairman of HPC, Mr Raji Philip, told Business Line that it was poised to become a Rs 3,000-crore company by 2011 with installed capacity for producing over 8,00,000 tonnes of paper and newsprint, as against its combined production of 3,20,113 tonnes of paper and newsprint and a turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore during the fiscal ended March 2006.

Mr Philip said all the expansion programmes would be completed by 2010-11. The programmes included the Rs 650-crore capacity expansion at its Naogaon mill in Assam to raise its annual production capacity to 1,35,000 tonnes of writing and printing paper from the existing 1,00,000 tonnes. The capacity at Cachar mill in Assam would remain at 1,00,000 tonnes, but the mill's production system would be modernised. The revamped Nagaland paper would be able to produce about 67,000 tonnes of writing and printing paper.

He said that the investment proposal for the new mill at Uttar Pradesh would soon be submitted to the Union Ministry of Heavy Industry, while approval from the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs was expected any time for the Rs 700-crore expansion plan for its Kerala-based wholly-owned subsidiary — Hindustan Newsprint Ltd (HNL). The newsprint-making capacity at its Kerala mill would be raised from 1,00,000 tonnes to 2,70,000 tonnes.

Meanwhile, preparatory work for the expansion of HNL's capacity, the proposed UP project and the Tuli project are, at present, under various stages of implementation.

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