The Hindu : Business : Empee Sugars to invest Rs. 200 cr.

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Thursday, Jun 30, 2005

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Business

Empee Sugars to invest Rs. 200 cr.

Staff Correspondent

Crushing capacity to be raised to 7,500 tonnes a day

CHENNAI: Empee Sugars and Chemicals Limited (ESCL), part of the Rs. 400-crore Empee group, will be investing Rs. 200 crore over the next five years in the company's businesses such as power generation, sugarcane crushing and alcohol manufacture.

R. Chandramohan, Senior Vice-President of ESCL, told reporters on Wednesday that the company planned to raise the sugarcane crushing capacity from 2,500 tonnes crushed per day (TCD) to 7,500 TCD by 2009-10.

He said ESCL would explore new areas for cane development. It planned to expand the cane cultivation area to 25,000 acres by 2009-10. The total cane crushed in 2004-05 was 2.5 lakh tonnes and the company was expected to crush four lakh tonnes by the end of the sugar season 2005-06. The Nayudupet unit in Andhra Pradesh had delivered higher crushing, recovery and sugar production. The average recovery had improved substantially in the last financial year.

In the current year, ESCL planned to increase its sugar production to 3.80 lakh tonnes from 2.38 lakh tonnes in 2004-05. It would import 40,000 tonnes of raw sugar, as per the balance quota allotted to the company under the advance licensing scheme.

ESCL was also planning to set up a 20 MW co-generation power plant at Nayudupet at a cost of Rs. 80 crore. The plant would become operational by the beginning of 2007. Ten per cent of the power produced would be used for internal consumption.

The funds for the plant would be raised through internal accruals and also through bank loans, he added.

Mr. Chandramohan said the industrial alcohol production of the company would be increased from 30 kl a day to 60 kl a day, by the end of the current fiscal.

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