Dollar Industries setting up Rs 35 cr processing unit in TN

The company recorded a turnover of Rs 579.47 crore for the financial year ended March 2013

As part of its backward integration plan, Dollar Industries Limited, a Calcutta Stock Exchange-listed company engaged in the manufacture of hosiery innerwear, is setting up a fabric processing unit in Erode district of Tamil Nadu with an investment of Rs 35 crore.

“Construction work on the facility, which will have the capacity to process 15 tonne of fabric a day, has already begun. The project is being funded through a mix of internal accruals and bank loans. It should be up and running by this Diwali,” Vinod Gupta, managing director of Dollar Industries, told Business Standard.

At present, the company has a manufacturing unit each in Kolkata, New Delhi, Ludhiana and Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, with a combined installed capacity of 600,000 pieces a day. While the company is currently churning out 400,000 units a day, Gupta said it was looking at fully utilising the capacity in two years from now.

Stating that the organised hosiery market in India was currently pegged at Rs 5,000 crore, with the unorganised sector running parallelly with an equal market size, he said the company's business in Andhra Pradesh grew 18 per cent in FY13 and was projecting this to touch 25 per cent this financial year, with the average year-on-year growth estimated at 20 per cent till the end of FY15.

Dollar Industries recorded a turnover of Rs 579.47 crore for the financial year ended March 2013, as compared with Rs 453.54 crore in the previous year. Its export figures touched Rs 46.5 crore in 2012-13, as against Rs 33 crore in 2011-12. The company projects a turnover of Rs 650 crore for the current fiscal.

Replying in the negative to a query on any plans to raise capital for future expansion, Gupta said the company had appointed a merchant banker in Mumbai to get listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange shortly.