Bhubaneswar: Tata Refractories Ltd (TRL) is planning to modernise and expand the capacity of its plant at Belpahar in Orissa’s Jharsuguda district. "Once we are on the profit track after the modernisation of the plant, we will go for the expansion programme", the TRL managing director Kamath told FE. He said that the plant’s capacity would be expanded to 3 lakh tonnes per annum from the present 1.23 lakh tonnes.

TRL has launched a massive modernisation plan with an investment of
Rs 84 crore to strengthen the capacity and capabilities leading to overall improvement in quality, yield and productivity.

While the major part of the investment, around 58 per cent, would focus on quality and yield improvement, 30 per cent would be on productivity rise and the rest would be distributed among energy, information technology and others.

The modernisation programme christened as "Fortune 500" would be completed by 2008. This investment is aimed at achieving a turnover of Rs 500 crore by 2007-08. The turnover of TRL during 2002-03 was Rs 244 crore, which includes Rs 23 crore export earnings.

The company has posted a net profit of Rs 6.74 crore last year.

MR Kamath said under the programme, Rs 84 crore would be invested mainly for the upgradation of infrastructure and facilities over a period of five years in a phased manner. The investment for the current year would be Rs 38 crore.

He said that the capacity of the plant would be increased to 1.75 lakh tonnes from the existing 1.23 lakh tonnes on the completion of the modernisation programme.

This would enable TRL to grab 24 per cent of the domestic market share. Currently, TRL has a market share of 18 per cent in the country.

The company’s global market share would also go up to one per cent from the present 0.5 per cent within the same time frame, Mr Kamath said. He said TRL is proposing to fund the modernisation programme from a mix of internal accurrals, debt and fresh investment.