Tata Steel to enter oil pipe mart

Tata Steel is mulling an entry into the manufacture of pipes for oil and gas pipelines to cash in on the expected demand in the sector. It is also expanding its capacity in structural and precision tubes to make the most of the construction boom.

With the demand for oil and gas pipeline infrastructure expected to rise in the country and abroad, Tata Steel sees good potential for diversifiying its tube manufacturing activities into the sector in the next three years.

"We are assessing the financial viability of manufacturing pipelines for oil and gas transportation. The planning is still in the initial stages and a decision is yet to be finalised," said Vivek Kamra, executive in-charge (tubes).

Kamra sees an initial manufacturing capacity of 300,000 tonne as viable for venturing into the oil and gas pipeline business. He added with such a capacity, it was possible to achieve a turnover of Rs 1,500 crore in three years. Currently, only a few major companies like Welspun and Jindal have a presence in the segment.

Tata Steel will invest nearly Rs 120 crore to hike its precision tubes capacity from 50,000 tonne per annum to 1,25,000 tonne per annum by next year. The market size of the domestic precision tubes industry is currently 3,50,000 tonnes.

The company, which will have a total capacity of 3,50,000 tonne in tubular products by end of 2006-07, will hike up its capacity to 0.5 million tonnes by 2008-09. Of this, 5-10 per cent will be earmarked for exports.

In the case of structural tubes, used for construction, sales are expected to go up from 35,000 tonnes in 2005-06 to 70,000 tonnes this financial year.

"Our expectations are that the market for structural tubes is expected to double every year. Our plans are to raise capacity to over half a million tonnes by 2008-09," said Kamra.

The tubes business yielded a top line of Rs 1,020 crore for Tata Steel last year and is expected to go up to Rs 1,400 crore in the present year.

Bank of India (BoI) today raised $240 million through issue of Tier II bonds with the coupon at 138 basis points over Libor.

The bank received subscriptions of over $1 billion for the $200 million issue under its medium term notes programme. It decided to exercise the greenshoe option of $40 million and also close the issue a day before.

Tata Sky Ltd., the 80:20 joint venture from TATA and STAR, has launched its interactive service, ACTVE WIZKIDS, aimed at child's classroom learning through entertaining, educational games.

A Parental Control service has also been started that allows an entire channel to be blocked outalong with movies based on parental ratings across channels, stated a company release.

Launched in August, the service has already strengthened its distribution set-up to 3200 cities and offers 75 television channels, including 7 interactive services.