Ramky, ITC to set up waste paper recycling plant

Cigarettes-to-hotels major ITC and the Ramky Group have joined hands to set up a waste paper recycling plant.

The location is yet to be finalised, but Ramky will foot the entire project cost, while ITC will facilitate by strengthening channels for waste paper collection from households and offices. It is also said that ITC would look at marketing the paper board manufactured in the project. However, details of the shareholding haven’t been finalised, sources said.

“It would take about two years for the project to come up. We’re working on strengthening the source collection channels first,” Sanjay Singh, CEO, ITC Paperboards, said.

According to him, a plant with one lakh tonne, capacity would cost about Rs200 crore.

“We have already entered into an MoU with ITC for taking the project forward. We have expertise in waste management. We are willing to set up the plant,” Ayodhya Rami Reddy, Ramky’s chairman, said.

ITC has been working on recycling waste paper and has also started a waste out of waste (Wow) project. “The Wow project was started as a corporate social responsibility initiative. But, we have linked to our business,” Singh said.

The company has already set up a one lakh tone capacity plant at Coimbatore. The plant manufacturing paper board uses waste paper and other related recyclable material as raw material. ITC also has a half-a-million tone paper and paper board plant at Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh. For this, the company has raw material source in the form of its own plantations of about 1.15 lakh hectares.