Amara Raja to set up three plants near Chittoor
HYDERABAD: Automobile ancilliary products company Amara Raja Batteries Ltd will invest Rs 1,000 crore to set up three battery production plants in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
While the Rs 450-crore automotive batteries plant, one of the proposed three, will be operational in December or January, the other two plants catering to tubular and plastics batteries and home UPS batteries are likely to commence operations by the end of 2015 or early 2016.
The company is already operating an automotive batteries unit at Tirupati with a production capacity of 6 million units per annum. 'The current unit's capacity is fully utilised and the upcoming plant at Chittoor will have 6 million units production capacity. When it starts operations in 3 months, it will start production with 40 per cent capacity,' said Ramachandra N Galla, chairman of the company.
While the company is yet to finalise the production capacity for its plastics battery plant, the home UPS battery plant is likely to have an annual production capacity of 3 or 4 million units.
'All the three plants will come up in Chittoor where we already have a UPS battery plant with a capacity of 4 million units. We have reached 50 per cent production capacity in this plant,' Galla said.
Speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of a HR summit organised by CII here, Galla said the company currently exports 12 per cent of its total production. This is set to increase in a few quarters from now.
Amara Raja, which registered a profit of Rs 367.44 crore on revenues of Rs 3,451.75 crore in 2013-14, has been registering a growth of 25-30 per cent. 'We would like to maintain that growth and with the commissioning of the new plants, we hope the growth will be significant,' he said.
The company has seven business units covering power, batteries, precision products, electronics, food, infrastructure and industrial services. The batteries division accounts for about two-thirds of the total revenues. The division caters to industrial and automobile sectors and has a market share of more than 35 per cent.
News Posted: 9 October, 2014
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