The Hindu Business Line : MBD group plans new paper mill in Himachal

Capacity expansion

The company plans to increase capacity of its paper mill in Palwal to 45 tonnes a day.
The proposed mill in Himachal Pradesh is to have a 60-80 tonnes a day capacity.

New Delhi , April 10

In a bid to capitalise on the boom in the paper industry, MBD Group plans to establish a new paper mill in Himachal Pradesh over the next 12-18 months, aimed at catering to in-house requirements of the publishing giant and meeting the market demand.

"At present, the paper produced in our existing mill in Haryana is for in-house consumption for the publishing business. But we see a lot of potential for external sale in the market especially for exports.

The new mill will cater to both these requirements," Mr Ashok Kumar Malhotra, Chairman and Managing Director of MBD Group, told Business Line here.

The company also plans to increase the capacity of its paper mill located in Palwal (Haryana) from 35 tonnes to 45 tonnes a day in the next 2-3 months.

The proposed mill in Himachal Pradesh is expected to have a capacity of 60-80 tonnes a day.

The mill currently produces writing and printing paper, he said, but declined to divulge the investment earmarked for the new mill or the expansion of the existing one. Pegging the group revenues at Rs 200 crore for 2005-06, Mr Malhotra said the business was growing at 10-15 per cent every year. With 35 offices and five printing presses, the group publishes over five lakh books per day, in various languages and has complete backward and forward integration with its own paper mills for in-house paper manufacturing. On the publishing side, the companies under the group include — Holy Faith International, Modern Publishers and Malhotra Book Depot.

It recently launched a new company MBD International, which publishes general books.

Besides publishing, the group has diversified interests in hospitality, real estate as well as mall development, the latest venture being the Rs 140-crore three-in-one mixed-use development project in Ludhiana.

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