Emami’s has announced its plans to invest Rs. 2,000 crore in a three-year plan that envisages the setting up of a new plant in Bharuch in Gujarat to triple its production of high-quality coated packaging board. The foundation stone of the greenfield plant located near the Narmada river was laid by Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, on 21 September 2018 in the presence of Emami’s top management.
Headquartered in Kolkata, the Emami group consists of FMCG company Emami (turnover Rs. 2,400 crore); Emami Paper Mills (turnover Rs. 1343 crore); and, Emami Infrastructure (turnover Rs. 120 crore). All three companies are listed on the stock exchange and are profitable with a consolidated turnover of Rs. 3,863 crore and a consolidated profit of Rs. 330 crore in the financial year ended 31 March 2018. In the same financial year, Emami Paper had a turnover of Rs. 1343 crore with a profit of 16.38 crore.
Reliable sources tell us that two paper machines, each of 200,000 ton capacity, will be set up in the new plant in a three-year relay race – since it takes about 18 months to set up and commission a paper machine of this size. To be commissioned by March 2020, the first of the two phases is expected to cost Rs. 1,000 crore that will be raised in a mixture of equity and debt.
Emami, which earlier manufactured other papers including newsprint, set up its first high-quality packaging board machine about five years ago in Balasore in the east coast state of Odisha. It currently manufactures gray board, folding box board (FBB) and solid bleach sulphate board (SBS) on a single machine with a capacity of 180,000 tons and it plans to do the same on its next two machines in the Gujarat plant.
Strategic location
The new project is strategically located for supplying paperboard to the fast growing monocarton converting plants in Western India and to make Emami a volume player in the premium packaging category. Bharuch is 100 km from Vadodara, 200 km from Ahmedabad and 300 km from Mumbai. At the same time, it is just 60 km from the sea at Dahej and 200 km from the packaging clusters of Daman and Silvassa.
