The Hindu Business Line : Bannari Amman Sugars to expand capacity at Karnataka

BANNARI Amman Sugars Ltd, which has two sugar factories — at Sathyamangalam in Tamil Nadu and at Alaganchi village near Nanjangud in Karnataka — is in the process of expanding the Karnataka unit to 7,500 TCD (tonnes of cane crushing per day).

The company commenced production at the Nanjangud unit in 1992 with an installed capacity of 2,500 TCD. This was expanded to 5,000 TCD in 2000. It is now enhancing the capacity by another 2,500 TCD.

The installed capacity at the Sathyamangalam unit stands at 4,000 TCD. The sugar units in the two States have a combined annual production capacity of 0.25 million tonnes of sugar.

Cane is crushed for close to 280 days on an average at both locations and the recovery has always been above 10 per cent, company sources told Business Line. The crushing performance and recovery details at the Karnataka unit show that the quantities crushed rose from 6.42 lakh tonnes in 1998-99 to 14.40 lakh tonnes in 2003-04, but slipped to 8.84 lakh tonnes in 2004-05.

The dip in crushed volumes has been attributed to the prolonged drought over the last three years. The unit crushed 2.40 lakh tonnes of cane up to September 2005.

Company sources said there were more than 30,000 growers registered for supply of cane, covering an area of 44,000 acres and spread over a radius of 85 km. The Co.86032 high yield, high recovery variety was planted in more than 80 per cent of the cane area, they said.Stating that the area under cane registered a ten-fold increase in the Nanjangud region since the inception of the plant in 1992, the source said most growers had switched from traditional crops such as paddy, cotton and vegetable cultivation to cane in that belt.

With the expansion in the offing, the cane requirement would also rise.

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