NSL Sugars in Rs 600cr spread

NSL Sugars, an associate company of Hyderabad-based NSL Group with interests in seeds, textiles, cotton, sugars and power, has lined up Rs 600 crore for fueling its organic and inorganic growth plans.

NSL group chairman M Prabhakar Rao said the company was setting up a sugar crushing unit at Mahabubnagar at a cost Rs 300 crore beside taking over a unit in Bellary for an equal amount. While NSL Sugars will have 30 per cent equity, the rest will be raised as debt.

With the addition of these two units, NSL Sugars, formerly SCM Sugars Limited, will have a combined crushing capacity of 11,500 tonne per day and a co-generation capacity of 80 Mw.

“We are in the final stage of taking over the Bellary sugar unit,” Rao said. The plant has a crushing capacity of 1,500-tonne per day and a cogeneration capacity of 28 Mw. Post acquisition, this will be upgraded to 3,500 tonne per day.

Krishnaveni Sugars in Mahabubnagar, on the other hand, will be ready for crushing by December next year. The plant will also have a crushing capacity of 3,500 tonne and a co-generation capacity of 26 Mw.

NSL Sugars, which began commercial crushing in July 2004 in Mandya district of Karnataka, has a turnover of Rs 350 crore.

Meanwhile, Nuziveedu Seeds Limited, another group company, is planning to develop its own Bt traits for cotton to reduce the royalty it is paying to Monsanto. The company has signed MoUs with National Botanical Research Institute of India and JK Seeds in this regard.

With JK Seeds, the company is carrying out trait introgration, which is transfer of traits to the parent plant. Last year, it sold about 6.3 million Bt cotton seed packets.