BIG PLANS

Mumbai, July 15: Speciality steel-maker Mukand Ltd has prepared a Rs 300-crore capital expenditure plan. It will expand the capacities of its brownfield facilities in Karnataka and Maharashtra, and set up a greenfield plant.

In another development, Niraj Bajaj has taken over as the chairman and managing director of Mukand from Rahul Bajaj. Niraj was Mukand’s managing director earlier. Another managing director Rajesh Shah has also been promoted as the co-chairman of the company. “The capital infusion will help the company increase its production capacity by 80 per cent to 5.4 lakh tonnes a year from three lakh tonnes at the existing facilities,” Shah said after the company’s AGM.

Mukand has two plants at Hospet, Karnataka and Kalve in Maharashtra. The company today announced that it has recorded a 3 per cent rise in net profit for the quarter ended June 30 at Rs 13.2 crore against Rs 12.82 crore a year ago.

The company’s turnover, including excise and other receipts, was Rs 498 crore in the quarter, compared with Rs 480 crore in the year-ago period. Export revenue went up to Rs 38 crore from Rs 26 crore, recording a 47 per cent hike.

Mukand will increase the production capacity of its speciality steel and industrial machinery divisions by 80 per cent to 540,000 tonnes from 300,000 tonnes by April 2008.

The capex of Rs 300 crore will be mainly funded through internal accruals. Mukand’s plans also include a greenfield project at Lonand near Satara on a 40-acre site. The company will install additional downstream facilities there. Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation has already allotted the land.

Mukand is also into industrial machinery and road constructions.

The turnover of the industrial machinery division was Rs 57.25 crore in the quarter. Shah said the company was expecting this division to fetch a revenue of Rs 290 crore by the end of this fiscal.

The road construction business, however, recorded a 44.6 per cent dip in revenue during the first quarter at Rs 17.94 crore from Rs 32.39 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

Asked whether Mukand would like to hive off this business, Shah said pending jobs would require another six months to complete and after that the company would take a call whether to run it or not.