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Building materials maker Hyderabad Industries Ltd is building up its portfolio of non-asbestos based products such as tiles, walls and ceiling.
As part of this strategy, it is expanding its autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) block building capacity at its Golan plant near Surat from two lakh cubic metres to three lakh cubic metres in the next six months.
The C K Birla Group company currently has 13 manufacturing facilities across the country, with a combined production capacity of one million tonnes of fibre cement sheeting and 3.2 lakhs cubic metres of ACC blocks.
Abhaya Shankar, Managing Director, said the share of asbestos-based products in its portfolio has come down from 90 per cent a few years ago to 80 per cent currently. “We will be bringing it down by five per cent every year so as to correspondingly promote non-asbestos based green products,” he told media persons here today.
He, however, said asbestos ceilings would continue to have their presence in the Indian building sector, especially in the rural housing segment. HIL today launched an initiative to develop a pool of skilled construction workers, including masons, carpenters and electricians, as the country is facing an increasing shortage of this talent pool.
For this it has tied up with an NGO, Shramika Educational Society, to develop a pool of 250 people with skilled training in the construction sector this year.
To start with, it has launched its first batch of 45-day training with 25 students in Hyderabad, all from economically weaker sections and with qualification of below 12{+t}{+h} class. Another batch of 25 students will soon be taken up as the second pilot project.
“We will absorb most of these students, who can also get employment elsewhere in the building sector. They can look forward to earn an initial salary of between Rs 5,500 to Rs 7,000 a month and scale up to Rs 15,000 within a span of 18-24 months,” Sanjay Kavathalkar, Vice-President (HR), said.
He said the firm would be taking up such training class across its plant and depot locations.
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