The Hindu Business Line : Gujarat NRE signs pact with Chinese co for tech transfer

THE Gujarat NRE Coke Ltd (GNCL) has signed a technology transfer deal with SSIT, China, to equip its new plant at Dharwad in north Karnataka with stamp charged coke making machinery for additional 400,000 tpa capacity.

The joint venture between GNCL and Kalyani Steel had already commenced work for a 3,24,000 tpa plant where the former holds 60 per cent equity and the latter, 40 per cent.

Talking to Business Line, Mr Arun Kumar Jagatramka, Managing Director, GNCL, said the agreement with the Shanxi-based R&D company included both insourcing of plant and machinery and transfer of technology. Currently, Tata Steel is the only company in India that has the stamp charged coke making machinery, he said.

"The deal was inked only a couple of weeks ago and the project would commence in a month's time. The game plan is to have the additional capacity ready almost by the same time as the original 3,24,000 tpa plant where the work started some four months ago. The new project is being set up at a cost of Rs 80 crore while the ongoing one has been estimated at around Rs 50 crore," Mr Jagatramka said.

This comes even as GNCL is close to completing the Rs 55-crore, 3,24,000 tpa met coke plant at Bachchau, near Kandla. While this would take the company's total capacity in its home State to 0.682 million tpa, the die has been cast for the company to become a multi-locational entity with its Karnataka venture gaining upper hand in terms of capacity.

"The strategy is clear for GNCL as there is a surplus of met coke capacity in Gujarat. We are aiming to take our total capacity to 1.4 million tpa by December 2005 though by that time India too may have a surplus of this commodity. That is why we have seriously begun looking at exports to support the domestic sales. In that sense, our recent shipment of 21,000 tonnes of coke to CSN, Brazil, was a trial run," Mr Jagatramka said.

Having hit a jackpot in February-April, 2004 when the coke prices zoomed three-fold to around Rs 21,000 per tonne, GNCL is looking to consolidate its presence by cornering some 30 per cent of India's met coke non-captive manufacturing capacity over the next one year. The company plans to push its topline growth by over 75 per cent in the next 12 months to Rs 600 crore even after factoring in a softer price line for the next fiscal. It hopes to record Rs 350 crore this year.

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