Country’s leading manufacturer of abrasives and industrial ceramics Carborundum Universal, a part of Chennai-based Murugappa Group, has formed a joint venture with Israel-based Cellaris for the refractory business. It would be a 51:49 joint venture, with Carborundum holding 51 per cent and Cellaris picking up the rest.
“We got the approval to set up a joint venture with the Israeli company Cellaris at the Cochin SEZ, owned by CUMI. This JV will produce fibre refractory,” according to K Srinivasan, managing director of Carborundum Universal.
Fibre refractory will be a special grade of refractory, which has in its terms of thermal ability as good a property as a fibre, but in dimensional stability it’s like a fired product. It is first of its kind raw material and the company expects to see this working by the second half of 2012. The end-user segment will be the refractory manufacturers, who will be using the same as input or raw material.
The JV has planned to make an investment of Rs 15 crore initially. The plant in its present form actually was operational and existing in Israel. After the formation of JV, the plant in Israel has been dismantled and will be brought to its Cochin SEZ for re-commissioning.
“We would prefer calling this technology demonstrator plan in the first stage, so it would not be a great turnover, even if you run the plant flat off we will do less than Rs 10 crore. But once we stabilise and run it, we will scale up and go for a larger scale commercial plant,” said Srinivasan.
The refractory business comes under company’s ceramics division, which comprises both industrial ceramics and refractories. This division’s business caters to wide a variety of industries including healthcare, metals, food processing, cement, and electricity transmission, among others.
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