Balaji Amines setting up hotel in Maharashtra

Hyderabad-based speciality chemicals manufacturer Balaji Amines Limited (BAL) is setting up a three-star hotel at a cost of about Rs 30 crore at Solapur in Maharashtra.

The company has already finalised a deal with the Sarovar group for managing the hotel being set up in an extent of 1.5 acres. “We are likely to enter into a memorandum of understanding in a month’s time,” BAL managing director, A Prathap Reddy, told Business Standard.

According to Reddy, the hotel was conceived for utilisation of its vacant land and also keeping in view the future developments in and around Solapur where NTPC, Bharat Forge and Thermax among others were establishing their units.

“Solapur is developing fast. An air link had also been recently established between Solapur and Mumbai. Besides, there is a severe shortage of good hotel rooms in the area,” BAL director, G Hemanth Reddy, said adding the hotel would be ready for occupation in two years. The project would be financed through internal accruals and debt.

BAL, which has two manufacturing units, one at Tamalwadi in Maharashtra and another at Bollarm here, has also embarked upon a Rs 60-crore expansion project to be completed by August 2010.

Hemanth Reddy said the expansion project would be funded through Rs 40 crore of term loan and Rs 20 crore of internal accruals. The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) has allocated 40 acres of land to the company at Tamalwadi where its manufacturing unit is located.

In July 2009, BAL, which is a leading manufacturer in the field of fine chemicals, speciality chemicals, aliphatic amines and derivatives, completed a Rs 70 crore expansion-cum-diversification project involving setting up two windmills of 1.5 Mw and 2.5 Mw each, a research and development plant and a PVPK production plant. A tablet coating agent, PVPK is a regulatory product.

Following the second expansion project, the company's installed capacity would go up to 50,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) from the current level of around 45,000 tpa. It would also be adding another windmill of 1.5 Mw capacity being set up at Sataram in Maharashtra at a cost of about Rs 10 crore. “We are looking towards achieving a turnover of over Rs 500 crore by 2012,” Prathap Reddy said.

In 2008-09, the company posted a turnover of Rs 274 crore and a net profit of Rs 15.32 crore. For the nine-month period ending December 2009, its turnover and net profit stood at Rs 187.87 crore and Rs 16.8 crore respectively.

Stating that BAL had been able to achieve an average annual growth rate of over 20 per cent in the past five-six years, he said the company had been able to sustain the trend in its performance due to effective product mix and value-addition.