The Hindu : Business : Relocation of CLC gets under way

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 29, 2005

Business

Business

Relocation of CLC gets under way

Indrani Dutta

Leather complex expected to attract FDI

KOLKATA: Billed as India's largest relocation project, the Calcutta Leather Complex (CLC) is all set to get going, a decade after the Supreme Court ordered the shifting of 598 tanneries outside the city limits on pollution-control grounds.

The completion of the Rs. 350-crore project would add another feather to the cap of West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who is slated to inaugurate the complex on Saturday in the presence of the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, and the Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

The project, involving the development of 1,100 acres of low-lying land about ten km east of Science City, was awarded on a BOT (build-operate-transfer) basis to M. L. Dalmiya & Company Ltd by the State government.

CLC is an integrated complex which has the ultimate capacity for processing 1,000 tonnes of hides daily. There is scope for locating units involving the entire production-chain starting from raw materials to units making accessories. However, relocators have certain reservations about setting up abattoirs in close vicinity. Two of the six modules of common effluent treatment plant have already been set up.

As things stand now, 96 units have applied for the necessary consents for starting production. Of these, 78 are relocators and 22 are new units, including a Chennai-based company.

According to S. S. Kumar, the immediate-past chairman of the Council For Leather Exports (CLE), which had acted as a co-ordinator for the project, said the successful commencement of operations by the first batch of relocators would egg on others (who have acquired the land, but had not completed their projects).

The project is expected to attract foreign direct investment and give a fillip to leather goods exports, which are expected to touch Rs. 2,000 crore this fiscal with improvements in unit value realisation.

The 300-odd relocating units have already invested about Rs. 450 crore to set up units at the new location and the CLC Tanners Association has been formed to run the waste management facilities. The 598 units operating in the Tangra, Tiljala area on the eastern fringes of the city had a total processing capacity for about 800 tonnes daily but much of the industry comprised family-based units with archaic production methods. In the run-up to the CLC, many units fell by the wayside, unable to make fresh investments. About 350 units, excluding a clutch of small units (needing less than 400 square feet of space), are expected to ultimately relocate.

West Bengal, which has the country's third highest tanning capacity, also expects to wrest back its earlier position of supremacy.

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