Sintex to add two prefab plants

Ahmedabad-based Sintex Industries will by September add two new plants for its prefabricated business, said group president Sunil Kanojia.

The first one at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh will be commissioned next month and another one at Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh by the end of the current quarter.

The company has spent about Rs100 crore on the two plants. They take Sintex’s total number of prefab units to seven.

“We typically spend Rs50 crore per plant and at its optimum capacity can generate revenues of Rs250-300 crore,” Kanojia said. There is no volume-based capacity for prefab plants, he said.

Last fiscal, the company made ¤660 crore in prefab and is planning to grow that by 25% this year.

Prefab structures are those that consist of several factory-built components that are assembled on-site. They are used for, among other things, schools in rural areas, healthcare centres, agricultural shelters, small warehouses, lavatories and worker residences at construction sites.

“We look at the prefab business on a quarter-to-quarter basis. At any given point we have an order book of Rs100-150 crore,” Kanojia said.

Besides prefab, Sintex has monolithic construction and storage tanks, for which it’s best-known, under its building products division

Monolithic construction is a building solution where a mould of a structure is made and erected at the construction site and liquid concrete is poured through the mould, which is then removed.
Sintex has a monolithic order book of Rs3,000 crore.

Other than building products, Sintex is involved in textiles and custom mouldings, which include components for the electrical, wind power and automotive industries.

For the three months ended June 30, Sintex’s consolidated net profit rose 20% over the same period of 2010-11 on a similar growth in topline to Rs1,128.8 crore.

On Tuesday, Sintex closed 4% lower at Rs171.60 on the Bombay Stock Exchange when the Sensex shed 1.65% to 18411.62 points.