KRBL chairman Anil Kumar Mittal and joint managing director Anoop Kumar Gupta in Calcutta on Monday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, May 16: KRBL Ltd expects an additional turnover of Rs 200 crore this fiscal from its upgraded rice-milling plant at Dhuri in Punjab. The plant will start commercial production shortly.

KRBL had acquired the 65-acre plant in 2003 from Oswal Agro at a cost of Rs 15.8 crore. Once it is revamped, the plant will have a milling capacity of 130 million tonnes per hour.

Talking to reporters here on the sidelines of the company’s launch of India Gate Classic basmati rice, CMD Anil Kumar Mittal said the plant would be operational by September. “The plant is currently undergoing a Rs 100-crore revamp in two phases and will be fully operational by September.”

The new plant is expected to contribute an additional turnover of Rs 200 crore this year taking the total figure to Rs 750 crore in March 2006. In 2004-05, KRBL’s turnover stood at Rs 550 crore.

“We are targeting a turnover of Rs 900 crore by 2007,” Mittal added.

The company is planning to exploit bran and husk, the two key by-products of the rice-milling plant. Husk would be utilised to extract furfural, generate power and produce pharmaceutical-grade silica, while bran would be used to extract edible rice-bran oil and make de-oiled cakes for use as animal feed. Furfural oil is used extensively for industrial purposes.

“We also plan to culture wheat and other oil seeds in a major way,” Mittal added.

“By 2007, we plan to increase the contract farming plot from 1 lakh acres to 2 lakh acres in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab,” said Anoop Kumar Gupta, joint managing director.

The total basmati-export market is 8 lakh tonnes comprising 80 exporters. Of this, KRBL controls 11 per cent share and exports to 25 countries.

Exports contributed 70 per cent to the company’s total turnover in 2004-05. Its domestic turnover stood at Rs 195 crore in 2004-05 against the previous year’s Rs 170 crore.