ICI Plc subsidiary out of group recast net
Abhinaba Das
MUMBAI, Dec 29: The UK-based multinational ICI has decided to keep its explosives division - a 51 per cent-owned local subsidiary - out of the company's global sale of the explosives business. The high-performing division contributes Rs 150 crore to ICI India's turnover.With a gradual shift in the Indian mining sector from traditional long-wall mining to open-cast mining (which requires explosives in bulk rather than packaged explosives) and projected doubling of coal output by the turn of the century, the division is being kept back with ICI India under the assumption that it will contribute substantially to its growth. The division will stay out of the group's global restructuring programme of moving away from the explosives business. It has instead set up a greenfield project at Rourkela with an annual production capacity of 6,500 tonnes. Only last week, ICI plc announced hiving off its explosives businesses of the American and European subsidiaries to ICI Australia, which has been hived off from
the group and renamed Orica."The Indian operations are out of the sale. On the contrary, we are expanding the capacities," a senior ICI official told The Financial Express. ICI has an installed capacity of 20,000 tonnes per annum of packaged explosives at Gomia in Bihar. With the large-scale introduction of bulk explosives (as required by open-cast mining) the company has already set up 10,000 tpa of bulk explosives capacity at Gomia, and has also put up a new 6,500 tpa plant at Rourkella for the same. By the end of next year, ICI proposes to reach a capacity of 30,000 tpa. ICI India is also moving away from the traditional packaged explosives and instead focussing on open-cast and bulk explosives.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
|
