Jan. 28, 2010 Graphite India Ltd plans to invest 4 billion rupees over the next 18 months to augment its production capacity, a top official said on Thursday. "We will be setting up a coal-based thermal power plant of 50 MW capacity with an investment of 2.14 billion rupees, while 1.90 billion rupees would be spend for increasing our electrode capacity by 11,000 tonne," Chairman K.
K. Bangur told reporters. Feb, 2 Mr Bangur chairman of Graphite India said that the debt free company hoped to fund the 2 projects at a total cost of INR 400 crore through internal accruals. He added that the accent of the captive power plant would be on cost reduction. He observed that we are likely to save INR 1 per unit.
Despite an increase in input costs of between eight and 15% and rupee appreciation against the dollar and euro, the net profit for the Q3 shot up 117% to INR 63 crore. Gross revenue improved by 3% at INR 291 crore. The company also calibrated its capacity utilization at 60%. In the current quarter, utilization has risen to around 75% of the total current capacity of 78,000 tonne per annum.
Mr Bangur said that graphite electrodes for the arch furnaces remained the prime product accounting for 85% of the revenue. But the company was focusing on high margin, large diameter ultra high power electrodes.
