Four companies in Fab City to go on stream soon

Four clean technology companies - Solar Semiconductor, KSK Energy Venture Limited, XL Telecom and Energy Limited and Surana Ventures Limited - are set to start their operations at the Fab City here in a month.

According to BP Acharya, chairman and managing director of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited, these companies have the required machinery in place to produce solar cells and photovoltaic modules.

The companies have been allotted 160 acre out of the total 1,172 acre in the Fab City, which is a notified special economic zone. They would invest about Rs 6,532 crore ($1306.5 million) in phases in ten years.

Solar Semiconductor in the first phase would manufacture solar cells and solar panel. In phase II, it will enter into solar thin film technology and eventually scale up its manufacturing capacity to one giga watt per annum. The company would invest Rs 5,500 crore ($1,100 million) over a ten-year period.

KSK Energy Ventures, on the other hand, has set up a solar photovoltaic panel unit and has committed to invest Rs 351.25 crore ($ 70.25 million) in 50 acre.

Similarly, XL Telecom, which has also been allotted 50 acre, has lined up Rs 381.25 crore ($ $76.25 million) for solar cells and modules fabs.

Surana Ventures would invest about Rs 175 crore for solar photovoltaic cell and modules. It has already placed orders for machinery worth about Rs 30 crore. The company is setting up a 60Mw capacity unit and the products will primarily be for the export market. “The demand for solar cells is rising. Moreover, several fab units in China have closed due to overcapacity,” said company’s managing director Narender Surana.

Among others, Delhi-based Moser Baer, an optical storage device company, along with Allied Materials, is also setting up its facility for solar fab and photovoltaic cells on 100 acre here.

Acharya said the assembly, test, mark and package facility, storage and effluent treatment plants were being readied. Apart from industrial gases, a 5 million gallon capacity reservoir is already ready. Initially, it was planned to set up a 600 Mw captive power plant here.

Though a few companies have evinced interest in setting up the captive plant, Acharya said the government was looking at Fab City partners to execute the power project.

It may be recalled that the Fab City was originally conceived as a semiconductor hub with a capacity to make 30,000 wafers (each wafer has 100 to 1,000 chips) by 2009. The foundation stone was laid in 2006 and the Phase I was to be completed by April 2008.

However, only clean technology companies have till now come forward to start operations. “Most of the companies are investing in clean technologies as it is less labour and capital intensive and have shorter gestation periods,” Acharya said.

SemIndia, the anchor unit, which projected an investment of $3 billion (about Rs 15,000 crore) in its allotted 100 acre, struggled to achieve financial closure. In June, the government had issued notices to several companies that were allotted land but have not achieved financial closure or announced their technical tie-ups. Now, as a penalty, it has decided to reduce the land allotted to these companies. About 20 applications seeking land here are pending with the government.