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Naturol Bio-energy will invest Rs 80 crore more at its 300-TPD plant at Vakalapudi here to expand capacity and foray into food, nutrition, bio-chemicals and edible oils, according to Mr Bhaskar Chalasani, the Managing Director.
He said here that the company intended to become “Asia's largest integrated processing facility for edible oils along with fatty alcohols, bi-diesel and glycerin with these business initiatives.”
Branded edible oil
He said that in view of the current edible oil supply of 7 million tonnes an annum, a shortfall of 13 million tonnes an annum is envisaged by 2015.
“This is a huge market and we are going to launch our branded edible oil variants in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka in the first phase and later all over the country.
Naturol processes 400 tonnes of various oils in a day: soya bean, sunflower, palmolein, mustard, olive, soya bean blends and palmolein blends. Initially, sunflower oil will be sourced from units in AP and mustard oil from Rajasthan and other oils from different parts of the country,” he said.
Consumption pattern
Mr Bhaskar said the new expansion plans would enable the company to touch a turnover of Rs 900 crore by 2014.
Vegetable oil consumption in the country is continuously rising and has gone up in the past two years to 11.2 kg a head an annum. In comparison with the world average of 17.8 kg, it is still lower.
In Pakistan it is 16.1 kg a head an annum and in the west it is 44-48 kg an annum.
According to the estimates of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, edible oil demand in the country would be 20 million tonnes by 2015 and the current availability is 7 million tonnes.
A growth rate of 15 per cent an annum is needed to bridge the gap, but the current growth rate is only 4 per cent. Therefore, feels Mr Prasad, there is immense scope in the field. Otherwise, the country will have to depend on costly imports.
Mr Bhaskar said Naturol intended to go public in 2014 or so to meet its future expansion requirements and it also intended to take up clean energy generation for which environmental clearances had been obtained.
He said the Vakalapudi unit, located in the industrial area of the AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, was set up with an initial investment of Rs 155 crore to produce bio-diesel for export. The first shipment was made in 2008.
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