Balmer Lawrie & Co Ltd has planned to create a cold chain infrastructure at a cost of ₹165 crore.
Virendra Sinha, CMD of Balmer Lawrie told reporters after the company’s AGM that the company would set up three temperature-controlled warehouses in the national capital region, Hyderabad and Patalganga near Mumbai.
The planned investment would be to strengthen the company’s logistics business network across different regions in the country. “The proposed end-to-end cold chain services would cater to the needs of pharmaceuticals, dairy products, meat and poultry items players”, he added.
One warehouse will come up later in this financial year. The two others will follow in the next fiscal.
“We have got land in Hyderabad as well as in the NCR. We are likely to obtain land in Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation soon for the third infrastructure.
Each warehouse will have a capacity of around 3,000 cubic metres of storage space. In the second phase, we plan to roll out four more such warehouses in Chennai, Kolkata, NCR and Bangalore” Sinha explained.
He also said the proposed ₹220-crore multi-modal logistic hub project in partnership with the Vijag port trust was underway.
Joint ventureThe project, on 55 acres, will house container freight station, railway sidings, an ICD, an air-freight station and a truck terminal. The proposed 60:40 joint venture would build, manage and operate the hub. It is expected to be ready by end of the second quarter of the next financial year, he said.
The company has also decided to make finished leather chemicals in its Chennai plant portfolio through a technical tie-up with an Italian company.