Sterlite to double optical fibre making capacity

Pune: Sterlite Technologies Ltd is investing Rs 140 crore in doubling the annual optical fibre manufacturing capacity at its Aurangabad facility to 12 million km from the current six million km.

Commercial production is expected to commence by June 2009.

The facility would manufacture the company’s existing range of optical fibre products. It will also have the intrinsic capacity to manufacture products that are being introduced to cater to the high bandwidth applications required by global markets as per evolving international telecom standards.

Dr Anand Agarwal, CEO & Director, Sterlite Telecom, says: “Over the past several business quarters, we have achieved tremendous success in key high-demand markets in several geographies. With the strong outlook by the Indian and global optical fibre industry, we believe that this capacity expansion will give us the strategic advantage to capitalise on available opportunities and take our place within the Top 5 manufacturers in the world.”

The company currently caters to over 45 per cent of the domestic demand, and over 4 per cent of the global demand for optical fibre.

Global demand

Recent months have proven a revival in global demand for optical fibres.

As per CRU, UK, the global demand for optical fibre was 97.3 million km in 2006, close to that last seen during the Y2K telecom boom. The industry anticipates global demand will hit an all-time high in 2007.

In India, with the Ministry of Communications targeting 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010, the domestic optical fibre industry is estimated to grow 30 per cent year-on-year till 2010.