Boc Group To Pump In 50m

The UK-based BOC group, manufacturers of industrial gases, will invest £250 million in the country in the next two years.

The investment would be routed through its wholly-owned arm, BOC India.

BOC group chairman David John said, a major portion of the company's annual capital budget, around £800 million, would be spent in Asia.

Asia promises the highest returns as compared to other places such as the United States and Europe, he said and added that this trend would be maintained in the years to come.

The £200 million, earmarked for investments in the country, would be spent on setting up new plants as well as increasing the capacity of existing ones.

Earlier, during the inaugural ceremony of what the company termed as the largest air separation plant in the sub-continent here, John said that the world over, steel plants are outsourcing the supply of oxygen required for their blast furnaces.

He said that BOC has similar arrangements with British Steel, United States Steel and BHP of Australia, where air separation plants are maintained and run by regional BOC arms. According to the BOC group chairman, this would help steel firms to concentrate on their core area and move away from non-steel making activities.

Built at a cost of Rs 220 crore, the Jamshedpur air separation plant would supply industrial gases to Tata Steel on a captive basis. The plant, with a daily capacity of 1290 metric tonne(mt), would sell around 1000 mt of gases to Tisco. The rest would be sold by BOC to other parties.

Managing director, Tata Steel, J J Irani said that in the future, items for consumption by the steel company would be branched out to partners on a similar nature. Raman Pandya, managing director. BOC India, said that the company would support all of Tiscos future expansion programmes.

BOC India had also entered into a similar arrangement with Bhilai steel plant, Vizag Steel and Ispat Industries.

Regarding BOC Indias capital expansion plans, the company has earmarked Rs 400 crore as investment in the next three years and funding would be in the form of equity, term loans and internal accruals, a company official added.

The money would be spent on setting up air separation plants for specific industries like steel, petrochemical and oil refineries, he added. BOC group currently holds around 54.8 per cent of its Indian arms equity.