The Hindu Business Line : RAK Ceramics to make Indian arm a major contributor

UAE-based RAK Ceramics has announced major expansion plans that will make its Indian arm the largest contributor with 2 lakh square metre a day in the next three years.

At present, the global production of tiles from RAK is put at 3 lakh square metres a day.

“We will increase the capacity of our Kakinada plant to one lakh square metres a day from the present 20,000-sq m a day,” Dr Khater Massaad, Chief Executive Officer of RAK, told Business Line.

He was here in connection with the launch of RAK’s second store in the city.

RAK India, which invested $65 million on the plant, would pump in $ 15 million a year in the next three years for the capacity expansion.

Gujarat plant

As part of the expansion, the company would set up a 20,000 square metre-a-day plant at Rajkot in Gujarat with an investment of $50 million. The facility, which would be up and running by the year end, would ultimately become 1 lakh square metre a day plant in the next three years.

This will make India the largest contributor of ceramic products for the company with a total capacity of 2 lakh square metre a day.

“The size of the Indian ceramics market is at 200 million square meters a year. Compare this with China’s 1.2 billion square metre a year. We expect that the market size in India would grow to 400-500 million in the next five years,” the RAK Ceramics CEO said.

Real-estate ventures

Dr Massaad said the company had formed a joint venture called RAK Indu that had lined up residential projects worth $2 billion.

It had also formed a joint venture with a Singapore company to build 40 Millennium hotels with an outlay of $ 200-300 million.