Freight Station To Replace Binny Mills At Perambur

The 126-year-old Buckingham and Carnatic Mills, better known as Binny Mills, is to be shifted from its current premises in the heart of the city to a suburban location, with its owner Binny Ltd planning to set up a container freight station (CFS) in the 221-acre complex.

The move followed the huge success of Binny's voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) which effectively cleared the decks for the unit to be moved from Perambur to Singaperumal Kovil, 55 kms from here.

Company sources said yesterday that a fresh investment of Rs 20 crore would go into putting up the new plant, where modern spinning and weaving machinery bought by the mills two years ago for Rs 60 crore would be installed. This would help the ailing integrated mills to change over to modern technology at one go and leverage on its popular brand 'Binny' to regain the lost market shares, the sources said.

 

Binny Ltd had already acquired about 50 acres of land at the new site and was negotiating for another 50 acres. If conditions favoured, a processing unit would also be put up at the location. Otherwise, such a unit would be taken on lease. Binny Mills had run unviably for the past decade and been out of production for two years now, with the management citing technological obsolescence and excess labour as the main reason. The new textile mill will have an initial weaving capacity of 50,000 metres per month of fabric and a supporting spinning capacity, the sources said.

For processing and conversion, Binny is negotiating with a number of processing units for a possible lease. Meanwhile, Binny has succeeded in renewing its one-and-a-half year old licence from the centre to operate a CFS and is going ahead with plans to convert the Perambur complex suitably, sources said. The customs department, they said, was interested in having a warehousing facility in the premises, given its proximity to the Chennai port and the upcoming satellite port at Ennore, 20 kms north of here.

A marginal investment of Rs 5 crore would be made in creating the necessary infrastructure at the complex. The entire 221 acres in Perambur would be used for the new logistics facilities and the project was expected to considerably decongest movement of containers in nearby ports, the sources said.

The ongoing VRS scheme of Binny Mills, open till May 10, had received an overwhelming response from the workers, with as many as 4,006 employees of the total strength of 4,361 taking application forms till the afternoon.

Of them, about 3,000 workers have already submitted their applications opting out of their jobs under the scheme, company sources said.

Binny management expected the remaining 355 to follow suit. This could mean that fresh recruitment may take place for the new mills to come up at Singaperumal Kovil.

The management would not retain any of those workers who had applied for retirement, they said.

Sources in the Madras Labour Union and B and C Mills Staff Union attributed the response to the workers' lack of faith in the government's seriousness in resolving the issue and the management's willingness to run the unit.