NTC to sell 10.5 acres of Mumbai mill land for Rs 1,000 cr

The National Textile Corporation (NTC) will soon float two tenders to sell 10.5 acres of mill land in Mumbai, aiming to garner a minimum of Rs 1,000 crore.

"We will float tenders for selling off two mill lands in Mumbai. The reserve price is set at Rs 1,000 crore," NTC Chairman and Managing Director K Ramachandran Pillai told PTI.

NTC has nine mills situated in prime locations of the country's financial capital, including Prabhadevi, Worli and Lower Parel. The total area of these mills comes to nearly 60 acres.

The price of land in Mumbai is very high. And it is especially higher in these areas, ranging between Rs 80 crore and Rs 100 crore per acre, an analyst said.

Going by a previous experience of the firm, the mill lands might fetch NTC even more. In 2005, a NTC mill plot at Worli was sold for 274 per cent over and above the reserve price.

Though the NTC had earlier said that the land would be sold in phases, the company's Rs 9,102-crore expansion, diversification and modernisation programme spurred it to quicken the pace.

"We will sell two mills in the first phase. These two have a total area of 10.5 acres. We will issue tenders and the highest bidder will get the land," Pillai said.

Once a company referred to the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), NTC has come out of the red and drawn out a plan to achieve a turnover of Rs 2,014 crore by 2014, from Rs 524 crore in 2008-09.

NTC originally had 119 mills, out of which 77 were closed under the Industrial Disputes Act. Two have been handed over to the Pondicherry government and five are being revived through joint ventures with Pantaloons, Alok Industries and Bhaskar Industries.