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Bengal

Philips Carbon Black to set up greenfield carbon black plant in TN

Kolkata: Philips Carbon Black (PCBL), India's largest carbon black producer will come up with a greenfield carbon black plant in Tamil Nadu and undertake expansion in two of its existing plants.
The setting up of the Tamil Nadu plant and the expansion of the existing plants at Mundra and Palej in
Gujarat will entail a total investment of Rs 900 crore in the next two years. "We are setting up a 60-acre greenfield plant at Ennore in Tamil Nadu at an investment of Rs 600 crore with a production capacity of 1.5 lakh tonne. Along with it, we will go for de-bottlenecking of Mundra and Palej plants at a cost of Rs 300 crore.
50,000 tonne will be added to the Mundra plant by December 2018, while 30,000 tonnes capacity will be added to the one at Palej by March 2019," PCBL chairman Sanjiv Goenka said.
The Tamil Nadu plant is expected to be commissioned by 2020. The plan for expansion has been triggered from the rising demand of carbon black driven majorly by the
Tyre industry and specialty black users.
The total capacity will jump by 50 percent to seven lakh tonne in the next two years by when all the projects will be completed. The present capacity of PCBL's plants is around 4.7 lakh tonne.
PCBL's other plants in Cochin in Kerala and Durgapur in Bengal, however, will not see any capacity enhancement as of now.
PCBL also reported a jump of 174 percent in net profit to Rs 74 crore in the
Q4 period ended March 2018 on the back of lower interest outgo, operational efficiency and higher sales.
The debt of the company had been reduced by Rs 430 crore during 2017-18 to Rs 770 crore as of March 2018. "We are debt averse group. We are planning to wind up long term debt
in PCBL by 2020. It is about Rs 460 crore now," Goenka said.
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