TNPL goes ahead with expansion plan

By Our Corporate Reporter

CHENNAI, AUG. 26. Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers (TNPL) is in vigorous pursuit of plans and programmes aimed at increasing production capacity, improving quality of the existing products besides introducing value-added products.

Addressing shareholders at the company's annual general meeting here on Friday, Mr. N. Narayanan, Chairman and Managing Director, said the mill development plan seeking to improve the performance of Paper Machine I, being taken up at a cost of Rs. 25.50 crores, would be completed by October. With this upgradation the capacity of the machine would go up to 92,000 tonnes annually from 80,000 tonnes, he said. The company is also implementing an expansion scheme to enhance the output of hardwood pulp to 120 tonnes per day from 75 tonnes at a cost of Rs. 3 crores. This will help eliminate high cost import of hardwood pulp.

A bielomatic machine costing Rs. 10 crores has also been installed for online precision cutting and packing into A4, A3/ folio cut size reams.

Towards attaining self-sufficiency in power, a 90 tph boiler and a fourth turbo generator of 24.62 MW capacity are being installed at a cost of Rs. 53 crores.

Regarding future outlook Mr. Narayanan said the market for printing and writing paper had improved. Export sales trebled last year to 18,760 tonnes and the current year could see better returns thanks to hardening of international prices.

He said the domestic newsprint prices were mainly governed by international trends. The import duty together with surcharge of just 5.5 per cent is well below the WTO bound rate of 25 per cent. The recovery in domestic prices, commenced in January this year with the international price for India hardening to $610 a tonne. However, the low import duty resulted in severe dumping and the company was urging the Government to impose the WTO bound rate for newsprint, he said.

Mr. Narayanan said the company would also seek 50 per cent exemption from the 16 per cent CENVAT rate for paper made from non-conventional raw materials (TNPL uses bagasse from sugar mills) as had been done for several other products.

In the first quarter of the current year, sales turnover rose to Rs. 128.96 crores from Rs. 107.13 crores for the same period last year. Export sales shot up to 6,884 tonnes valued at Rs. 20.49 crores from 1,717 tonnes valued at Rs. 3.74 crores.

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