Shirdi Industries to invest Rs 1,500-mn in processing centres

Ahmedabad: Shirdi Industries, makers of input material for the furniture industry, will invest Rs 150 crore to set up processing centres in seven cities of India from where it would launch branded designer furniture under the ‘ASIS’ brand by the end of this fiscal.

The processing centres are being set up at Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai where customers would be provided choices for furniture to be assembled as per their demand, Mr Rakesh Kumar Agarwal, Managing Director, told a press conference here on Friday.

He said that while the market size of the white goods industry (consumer durables) in India was worth Rs 25,000 crore, that for furniture and related products was estimated at four times that number. “However, there are only five or six organised players, having a total business of only around Rs 100 crore, while the rest are in the unorganised sector,” Mr Agarwal said.

On a global scale, Shirdi’s manufacturing plant at Rudrapur (Uttarakhand) was the most integrated plant in the sector, he said, and added that its products such as particle board and medium-density fibre, which come 35 to 40 per cent cheaper than wood, would offer largely pre-assembled inputs for the proposed branded furniture to be put together at the processing centres.

Mumbai-headquartered Shirdi Industries has so far invested Rs 250 crore in its plant at Rudrapur, Rs 20 crore at the Yamunanagar plant, started in October 2007, and Rs 35 crore at the Chennai plant, scheduled to start by March 2009.

In 2007-08, the company’s turnover was Rs 220 crore, and this is expected to touch around Rs 300 crore this year, he added.