Calcutta, Nov. 28: The PLG group, owned by Purushottam Lal Goel and family, is planning to set up a retail store chain in Bengal. “We have decided to open five stores in the city to begin with and have earmarked an initial investment of Rs 100 crore,” said Pramod Goel, younger son of P.L. Goel and managing director of PLG group companies.

The Rs 700-crore group has also identified the locations for its PLG Fresh stores, Pramod said. “To be built after the Big Bazaar format, the PLG Fresh stores will be set up at Behala, Jessore Road, Howrah, Tollygunj and one between Baguihati and Ultadanga. In the next phase, the stores will come up at Asansol, Burdwan, Durgapur and Siliguri,” he added.

The family business was set up in 1910 by Pramod’s grandfather, late Chunilal Goel, as a small trading house in Rajasthan. The Goel family later on moved to Bengal and Maharashtra. In Bengal, the PLG group is the second largest wheat trader after ITC and it runs a 300-tonne-per-day (tpd) wheat flour mill in Howrah, besides having a packaging unit for edible oil that the company imports.

“We are also setting up an edible oil refinery at Haldia at an investment of Rs 80 crore. The plant will be operational by June next year and it is being set up in technical collaboration with Dakota-based De Smet Ballestra. The plant will have a production capacity of 300-400 tpd,” Pramod said. The edible oil plant will be set up by group company PLG Agrotech Ltd.

The group is also expanding its flour mill capacity, which is owned by group company PLG Flour Mills Ltd. According to Pramod, the capacity of the wheat flour mill, which has been set up in technical collaboration with Bhuller of Germany, will be doubled to 600 tpd at an investment of Rs 45 crore. The company has already invested Rs 45 crore to set up the flour mill in Howrah.

“From January, we will start retailing packaged wheat flour under the brand name Puja, while the edible oil will be sold under the brand name Khusboo,” Pramod said.

The group is also betting big on a greenfield project to “set up a catalyst regeneration plant at Jamnagar”. “Oil refinery companies, such as IOC, Reliance and Essar, require catalysts for desulphursing crude. But none of the Indian refineries make these catalysts. We are going to set up the country’s first catalyst regeneration plant in Gujarat at an investment of Rs 1,000 crore. For technical tie-ups, we are in talks with a French company and an American firm,” Pramod said.

PLG group company PLG Power Corporation will set up a 100-mw pit-head thermal power project in Raipur, Chhattisgarh and the company is already in the final stages of discussion with the state government for coal mines.

The group is also ramping up capacities of its companies, namely Goel Airshrink (India) Ltd — the maker of Saurabh branded fragrant, polypropylene mats — and Goel Cottex Ltd. “We are investing Rs 30 crore in Goel Airshrink to increase the capacity of the plant to 10 million pieces per year from 3 million at present.