Kribhco lines up Rs 1,000cr expansion plan

Krishak Bharati Cooperative Limited (Kribhco), a premier cooperative society for the manufacture of fertilizers, has lined up an investment of around Rs 1,000 crore in scaling up urea output at its plant at Hajira (Gujarat).

As per the expansion plan, Kribhco's urea production would go up from present 17.29 lakh tonnes per annum to 22.5 lakh tonnes per annum by October 2011.

B D Sinha, managing director, Kribhco said, “We are looking to scale up urea production at our Hajira plant by around five lakh tonnes. This capacity expansion would involve an investment of around Rs 1,000 crore.”

Kribhco's fertilizer complex at Hajira has four streams of urea plant and two streams of ammonia plant. While the urea plant has a capacity of 17.29 lakh tonnes per annum, the ammonia plant's capacity stands at 10.03 lakh tonnes per annum.

Meanwhile, Kribhco which is looking to diversify into the power sector, aims to set up a 1120 MW coal-based power plant at Buxar (Bihar) at an investment of Rs 5000 crore.

“We are in talks with the Bihar government for our power project, Kribhco needs coal linkage for the power plant and we expect some progress in this connection soon”, Sinha told Business Standard.

It may be noted that as part of its diversification plan, Kribhco had entered into a 40:60 joint venture with Anil Ambani owned Reliance Communications called Kribhco Reliance Kissan Limited in June this year.

The joint venture is meant for providing mobile value added services to the farmers through SMS or interactive voice responses (IVRs) on crop prices, temperature patterns, weather reports and availability of fertilisers.