Jai Balaji Industries, which is in recovery, is investing Rs 1000 crore in the state after a decade. CMD Aditya Jajodia said that the entire investment will be in the Durgapur plant in Bengal.
“The investment will be from internal accrual only and would be done in the next 15-18 months,” he added. The company has also set a target to become net debt-free in the next 18 months. It had taken Rs 559 crore from Tata Capital to refinance debts of asset reconstruction companies (ARC) which it is planning to prepay.
According to Jajodia, it is ramping up the manufacturing capacity of value-added products like ductile iron pipes and special-grade ferroalloys at the Durgapur plant. In addition, it is increasing metallic capacity by debottlenecking and technological upgradation of the pig iron plant and putting up additional sintering capacity for backward integration.
“We have already invested Rs 350 crore and the rest will be done in the next 18 months,” he added. The CMD, Jai Balaji pointed out that the plan is to go towards more value-added products for better margins. Two years back, value-added products were only 30-35% of the portfolio of the company which has already gone up to 55% now.
Once the new capex is over the value-added products would constitute 80% of the product mix of the company. “I am happy to share that we have achieved an EBITDA of Rs. 246.8 crores and PAT of Rs.234.6 crores during this quarter.