The Hindu Business Line : Anil Products bullish on southern textile sector

Corporate - Outlook
Marketing - New Products & Services
Industry & Economy - Textiles

Anil Products bullish on southern textile sector — Launches new range of starch

G. Gurumurthy

The company expects to market 700 to 1,000 tonnes per month of the new generation modified starch.

Coimbatore , Sept. 9

THE Ahmedabad-based industrial starch manufacturing company, Anil Products Ltd, is bullish on the southern textile sector, especially the fabric weaving industries.

It hopes to expand its market share among the textile processors who use this agro product in yarn sizing, the preparatory process in weaving.

Anil Products is trying to keep pace with the anticipated rise in sizing activity in cotton textile weaving industries in Tamil Nadu, which are geared to take advantage of the emerging quota-free global textile trade by next year.

It has launched a new range of modified starch called `Sizanil LV100' — an engineered corn-based industrial starch that gives higher productivity and improved sizing quality to the yarn used for fabric production.

Anil Products chose Coimbatore, the southern textile hub, to launch the `Sizanil LV100', given the intensive sizing activity in the State's weaving clusters of Erode, Palladam, Salem and Karur.

The Managing Director of the Rs 140-crore Anil Products, Mr Amol S. Sheth, was here for the product launch. He said with most Tamil Nadu-based cloth producers and powerloom weavers taking up modernisation vigorously by installing high-speed looms, his company too wanted to move along with the changing times. It has thus introduced the modified starch that will meet the quality demand of the sizing mills, Mr Sheth said.

Talking to Business Line here on Friday, Mr Amol Sheth said the all-India demand for industrial starch in the textile sector would be in the order of 1,20,000 tonnes per annum.

In the light of the induction of the modern sizing and weaving machinery, he expected his company to market 700 to 1,000 tonnes per month of the new generation modified starch. Industrial starch and starch derivatives are largely consumed by the five major manufacturing sectors — paper, food processing, textiles, pharmaceuticals and chemical industries. And 50 per cent of the starch goes to the textile sector.

With the current industrial starch production by its Ahmedabad plant at 400 tonnes per day (tpd), Anil Products' market share in starch for the textile sector is around 30 per cent. The company plans to enhance starch and starch derivatives processing capacity to 600 tonnes, Mr Sheth said.

This capacity expansion will cost around Rs 15 crore and will be completed in 6-9 months.

The company is also mulling a greenfield starch processing plant of 400 tpd capacity possibly in a State contiguous to maize-grown tract. It is also planning to create a co-generation facility in its Ahmedabad plant.

Mr Sheth said his company would invest Rs 80 crore-Rs 100 crore over two or three years on these plans.

Anil Products, which clocked a Rs 140-crore total sales in 2003-04, aimsto achieve sales of Rs 170 crore for the current year. Of this, industrial starch is expected to account for Rs 55 crore.

More Stories on : Outlook | New Products & Services | Textiles

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page