Exports zoom at PSL

Chennai: The country''s largest spiral steel pipe manufacturer, PSL Ltd, has logged 8,000 per cent increase in exports. The company exported Rs726 crore worth of pipes during FY 2005 as compared to Rs9.24 crore made in FY 2004. The sudden jump in exports includes turnkey orders bagged by the company in the last year from countries like Sudan, Oman and Bangladesh for private and government projects.

According to managing director Ashok Punj, "Our vision is to become the leading manufacturer of spiral welded steel pipes in India and beyond catering to the booming oil and gas and water industry in Middle East, North Africa and neighboring countries. The export figures for 04-05 speak of the company''s coming of age from being a manufacture of spiral welded steel pipes to designing pipe mills for its clients as per international standards at competitive prices."

"The new mill at Kandla, the tenth of the company has been set up basically to benchmark us as manufacturers meeting international capacity standards to meet the volume and size of the international orders he added."

The company has also announced the commissioning of phase one of it''s new plant in Kandla , which will add another 3.6-lakh tonne cpapcity to the existingn 6.75mt, taking the total capacity at Kandla to 10.35 lakh tonne per annum (tpa). The Kandla project is scheduled for completion in Q3.

PSL, the flagship company of the PSL group, is engaged in various types of pipe coating and pipe manufacturing at Daman, Kandla, Nani Chirai, Chennai and Vishakhapatnam. PSL has virtually doubled the earlier existing capacity of its pipes division with a capacity addition of three new pipe mills and the aggregate pipe manufacturing capacity of PSL is 5,25, 000mt a year, making the company the largest capacity pipe manufacturer in the country.