Saint-Gobain plans float glass plant in Rajasthan

Chennai: Saint-Gobain Glass India plans to invest Rs 1,000 crore on a three lakh tonnes a year greenfield float glass making plant at Bhiwadi in Rajasthan. This will take its float glass capacity to more than 7.5 lakh tonnes a year, from 4.5 lakh tonnes now.

Mr B. Santhanam, Managing Director, Saint-Gobain Glass India and President-Flat Glass, South Asia , that about 150 acres of land had been identified. The company would shortly sign an agreement with the Rajasthan Government for the project..

Funding for the new plant, which would go on stream in the first quarter of 2010, would be through a combination of equity and debt, he said. . Saint-Gobain would make more investments that provide end-to-end solutions to architectural, automotive and solar industries, he said.

Saint-Gobain Glass India, part of the €43 billion Saint-Gobain group of France, has invested close to Rs 1,500 crore so far on a glass complex at Sriperumbudur, west of Chennai. Apart from making float glass, the company processes advanced glass for the building industry and produces glass for the automobile industry.

Mr Santhanam said the northern region accounted for a third of the company’s sales and the Rajasthan plant would give it a better access to this region. Besides, the cost of transporting glass from the Sriperumbudur plant to the northern region worked out close to $70 a tonne (Rs 3,000) and this would come down by nearly half once the Rajasthan plant went on stream, he told Business Line. The Bhiwadi plant would be just 65 km from the Delhi airport and would be located on the proposed Delhi-Mumbai.

He said that Saint-Gobain was discussing with the Tamil Nadu Government on making fresh investments at the Sriperumbudur plant. “The Sriperumbudur plant is far from saturation. We have enough space to expand,” he said and added that there were considerable investment opportunities in high performance coating, advanced glass processing, automotive glass and speciality products.

Mr Anand Mahajan, General Delegate of Saint-Gobain General Delegation India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, said the new plant, along with likely investments in other divisions of the group would take the group’s turnover from Rs 2,000 crore in 2007 to Rs 5,000 crore in five years. Half of last year’s sales came from the glass division and another 35 per cent from high performance materials, Mr Mahajan said. Construction material accounted for the rest.

French glass major Compagnie de Saint-Gobain wants to wholesale building materials in India, under a single brand.

Saint-Gobain is Europe’s largest building material distributor and has 12 wholesale brands in its fold. For instance the company has a brand called ‘Point.P’ in France with about 1,700 outlets. ‘Dahl’ is another brand with about 200 selling points in Scandinavian countries and ‘Sanitas Troesh’ with 35 outlets in Switzerland. Through these outlets Saint-Gobain offers customers complete construction solutions and entire gamut of materials under one roof, though most of them are not manufactured by the Saint-Gobain group.

The French major now wants to try out the model in India. As a foreign company, it cannot open retail show rooms, hence it is considering wholesale outlets, Mr Mahajan said.

Besides wholesaling, Saint-Gobain is considering introducing its piping business in India, he said.