Saint-Gobain India, a subsidiary of France-based Saint-Gobain, will invest about Rs 1,000 crore to expand its production capacity at the company's facility near Chennai. The new capacities in coated line will go on stream in 2017 and in the float glass business in 2018.
With the investment, the company will set up its third float glass unit in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai. After the expansion, the company's production capacity of glass will increase from 1,500 tonnes per day to 2,500 tonnes per day.
"We are seeing traction in value-added glasses in tier II cities -- Trichy, Salem, Tirupur and Erode -- compared with the saturated metros like Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi," said B. Santhanam, president and managing director – flat glass (South Asia, Malaysia and Egypt), Mint reported.
The project will take the glass maker's total investment in Tamil Nadu to Rs 3,000 crore.
The Sriperumbudur facility of Saint-Gobain caters to the domestic market and also to West Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the ASEAN region, according to a BusinessLine report.
The company is also looking at synergy in its operations in sourcing sand from Neyveli Lignite Corporation's lignite mines. The company has a process that could use sand from Neyveli's lignite mines to make glass and related products for the ceramic industry, BusinessLine quoted Santhanam as saying.
Saint Gobain uses about 800 tonnes of sand daily and expects the consumption to increase to 1,400 tonnes after the commissioning of its new units, BusinessLine report detailed.
