Tata Chems' one-third revenue to come from agri-space
The Financial Express — June 9, 2007

Tata Chemicals, which is slowly morphing itself from being just a chemicals and fertilisers company to a company that operates in the entire gamut of agri-space, says that almost one-third of its revenues will come from the new businesses within the next five years. The Rs5,800-crore Tata Chemicals has been growing at about 32 per cent year-on-year since 2003.

The company is working towards creating newer environment friendly business segments that can be run as profitably as its existing businesses. Apart from its joint venture with Total Produce plc, to distribute fruits and vegetables to retailers and wholesellers, the company is also looking at developing biotechnology and nano-technology areas as well as in the bio-nano space.

Elaborating on its choice for the bio-nano space, Homi Khusrokhan, managing director, Tata Chemicals, told FE, "The boundaries between the different levels of science are blurring and we think that the bio-nano space is very promising and from that stream a whole new stream of products can emerge like biopolymers which could be of high value. It would not be heavy inorganic chemicals but knowledge-based, it will be cleaner greener chemistry using biotech processes."

Metal oxides made from enzymes of fungus, is just one such example. To take this forward, the company also plans to hire around 180 more scientists in the next two years for its innovation centre which currently has 20 scientists.

"We are hoping that a whole new stream of businesses can emerge out of the innovation activities we are carrying out today," said Khusrokhan.

Tata Chemicals is setting up a plant in Maharashtra to produce bio-ethanol and bio-diesel and plans to scale it up substantially once the first project takes off.

The plant that will produce 30 kilolitres a day will be somewhere between a pilot and a commercial project and will require an initial investment of Rs50 crore.