Amara Raja Batteries Ltd, a major manufacturer of batteries for industrial, office automation, home UPS systems and automotives, has finalised plans for setting up of a greenfield batteries plant with an investment outlay of Rs 190 crore.

“The company expects to finalise the location shortly and looking at both northern and western part of the country to set up the facility. The entire process of identification of land and implementation of the project, which includes related processing facilities, is likely to take about 12-15 months,” Mr. K. Suresh, Chief Financial Officer of ARBL said.

“The existing location cannot take any more load. Therefore, we are considering new location and also possibly new zone,” he said.

Mr Suresh told Business Line that the expansion of the office automation batteries would also be completed shortly taking the capacity up from 1.8 million now to 2 million units a year.

2-wheeler OEM supply

“We are also looking at supplying two-wheeler batteries to the OEM market from the first quarter of next financial year as the expanded manufacturing capacity is now in place,” he said.

The move to set up a new manufacturing base comes factoring the future growth phase beyond next financial year. The company, which now has a capacity for 5.6 million units a year of four-wheeler batteries and 4.8 million two-wheeler batteries after the recent expansion completed with an outlay of Rs 90 crore, expects all of the expanded capacity to be fully utilised by next financial year.

“Having registered a turnover of Rs 1,700 crore as of third quarter ended December 31, 2011, the company is on course to logging over Rs 2,300 crore during financial year, a growth of over 25 per cent, in spite of tough business environment,” Mr Suresh said.

The company shares closed the day's trade lower by 1.76 per cent to end at Rs 272.75.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in

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