B.K. Birla group company Kesoram Industries is planning to invest Rs 600 crore -- Rs 350 crore in the tyre business and Rs 250 crore in the cement business -- as capital expenditure in the current fiscal, a top company official said on Thursday."We have plans for capital expenditure. The capital expenditure will be Rs 600 crore in this fiscal of which Rs 350 crore will be invested in tyre business and Rs 250 crore will be for cement business," said the company's whole-time director and Chief Financial Officer Tridib Das."Rs 600 crore capital expenditure will be over and above Rs 500 crore which is already booked as work in progress," he said on the sidelines of the 97th Annual General Meeting of the company."In the cement business, capital investment will be made for purchasing land and to improve the injection of fly ash," he said.
The company continues to focus on and strengthen its tyre business even though it sold its tyre manufacturing plant at Laksar in Haridwar to JK Tyre for an enterprise value of Rs 2,195 crore.It has been concentrating on building its Balasore tyre manufacturing plant as a state-of-the-art facility. The Odisha plant capacity stands at 275 tonnes a day on bias tyre and it produces 1.85 lakh tyres a month for two-three wheelers."Rs 300 crore will be invested for producing passenger car radial tyre at the Balasore plant and the capacity for it (passenger car radial tyre) will be 2.9 million tyres a year," he said.Commercial production of passenger car radial tyres is expected from April next year, he said.