Negotiations are in the final stages with a clutch of buyers including Lafarge, Larsen & Toubro and UK-based buildings and material major Blue Circle. ""This is not a distress sale for the company as the cement division has never been in the red. So far, we had not received any interesting offer for the plant", a company official said.

"Negotiations are on with the buyers. We should be able to take a decision about the buyer by July" the official added.

The cement division made a profit of between Rs 14-15 crore in financial year 1998-99, he said. The company's profit for 1998-99 rose to Rs 80.77 crore from Rs 45.03 crore in the previous year.

Industry sources, however, feel that the company may find it difficult to dispose of the cement division which is in thecement surplus belt of Madhya Pradesh. "The price that the company is expecting is rather steep. The plant should be able to fetch around Rs 400 crore only", they added.

Lafarge executives are understood to have visited the plant earlier this year and even Associated Cement Companies (ACC) had shown initial interest in the plant.

The Raymond plant has been producing over 1.90 mtpa as against its installed capacity of 2.24 mtpa.

The official said the company's price expectation is realistic as the plant has the lowest cost of production due to the high proportion of portland pozzolona cement (ppc) in its product mix and economies of scale. "A similar plant of the Tatas was recently sold for over Rs 500 crore", he added.

Lafarge had acquired the 1.7 mtpa units of the Tatas at Sonadh in Madhya Pradesh and Jamshedpur in Bihar for Rs 550 crore.

Raymond, with diverse business interests such as textiles, cement and steel files had decided to shed its no-core businesses of cement and steel and concentrateon textiles.

The company is understood to have given the mandate to sell the cement plant to SBI Capital Services (SBI Caps). Efforts to sell the steel division of the company too have been futile so far, said sources.

Raymond had tried to sell off its steel division, which can produce upto 4,000 tonne of silicon steel per day to Thyssen of Germany. The deal was expected to bring in about Rs 300 crore for Raymonds.