STC pays 20 per cent interim dividend
New Delhi: The State Trading Corporation (STC) today paid interim dividend of Rs 5.46 crore, being 20 per cent of its capital, to the Government of India for 2003-04. Total turnover of the Corporation during the 10-month span of the current fiscal, from April 2003 to January 2004, has reached an all-time high of Rs 6,150 crore.

Export turnover, during the period, rose to Rs 860 crore as compared to Rs 478 crore during the corresponding period last year. STC has been able to stage a turnaround during the first 10 months of the current fiscal by posting a net profit (after tax) of over Rs 14 crore, after incurring losses during the last two years.
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Phoenix Lamps: Dollar loans to replace Rupee loans
Mumbai: Phoenix Lamps Ltd has gone in for a low-cost foreign currency dollar loan to replace its high cost rupee term loans. The company has pre-paid a rupee term loan of Rs 9.13 crore and is currently in the process of prepaying the balance rupee loan of Rs 21.04 crore to IDBI. The entire process will result in a saving of Rs 2.5 crore a year for the company. The company is currently availing a rupee term loan of Rs 30.17 crore from IDBI with an interest rate of 12.5 per cent per annum.

The company is a manufacturer and exporter of halogen automotive lamps and compact fluorescent lamps.
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SembCorp Industries: JV with Ramky Group
Hyderabad: The Singapore major SembCorp Industries, through its subsidiary — SembCorp Environmental Management (SembEnviro) - has entered into an agreement with the Ramky Group to form a joint venture company, in order to enter the medical waste disposal business in India.

The majority stake acquisition of the Ramky Groups Company, Medicare Incin, to the tune of 51 per cent, will establish SembEnviro as India's first multinational environmental company in the medical waste market.

The joint venture company to be called SembEnviroRamky, will leverage the strengths of both partners to provide world-class, value-added services to the growing medical and healthcare services. The current market size of the medical waste management services is estimated to be over $50 million with an annual growth rate of over 15 per cent. Medicare Incin is a leading bio-medical waste management and treatment services provider, with an estimated 30 per cent of the medical waste market. It has emerged as the largest distributor of facilities in eight cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Howrah and Ghaziabad. It is exploring opportunities to develop 25-30 more medical waste facilities within the next few years.
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Indian Rayon hikes Carbon Black capacity
Mumbai: Indian Rayon and Industries Ltd has informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that the expansion of capacity, from 44,000 to 84,000 tonnes, at its Hi-tech Carbon Division in Gummidipoondi has been commissioned. The capacity of the plant's total carbon black capacity has now increased to 1.6 lakh tonnes. Hi-tech Carbon manufactures carbon black, which is used in automotive tyres, plastics, paints, pigments and printing ink industries. Carbon black is used as a reinforcing agent in tyres when blended with polymers.
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Pune plant is Sandvik Asia's EOU
Pune: AN export-oriented unit for the manufacture of tooling cartridges, set up by the Pune-based Sandvik Asia Ltd. is expected to become operational from the second quarter of 2004. With this the global production of tooling cartridge would be brought into the Pune plant. Currently, there are seven such plants spread across the globe. The Pune plant would now be the prime location for the tooling cartridges with the other seven locations acting as a backup. The company said that exports had almost doubled during 2002-03, touching Rs 100 crore as against Rs 50 crore for the previous year.
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NTPC: Looking for policy options
Hyderabad: NTPC has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Administrative Staff College of India for carrying out joint research and to prepare "well-documented policy options" that would contribute to reform and sectoral growth in the area of generation, transmission and distribution of power. In a release, NTPC states that the power sector was passing through a critical transition phase, and that liberalisation, evolving regulatory framework and newer technologies were set to bring in a new era of speedy development in the sector.
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Coffee Day Xpress: Net profit in 2 years
New Delhi: Coffee Day Xpress, the Rs 250-crore Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Co Ltd's, strategic business unit that deals with setting up convenience food and beverage kiosks, has said that it will be making operating profit in two years. According to the company, since the kiosk model, based on the franchise system required no working capital, and a minimum investment of just Rs 2.5 lakh - Rs 3 lakh, generating profits was almost guaranteed. Coffee Day Xpress outlets were already making operating profit in five of the seven cities that they were present in. Coffee Day Xpress has tied up with corporates such as Airtel, Ericsson, IBM, TCNS, Hughes and Daksh, for setting up kiosks in their premises.
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DaimlerChrysler: Into trucks and buses by year end
Pune: DaimlerChrysler has announced that it is all set to step into the trucks business by the end of the calendar year. The company also announced plans to introduce its luxury buses in India. The company's 40-tonner (gross vehicle weight) premium truck, Actros, which is currently undergoing homologation at the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) is expected to roll onto Indian roads by end-2004. The Actros will be launched in two versions, a tipper and a tractor-trailer.

According to the company it's export of components for their global requirements was now well in place, and in 2003, the company's share of the total components exported out of India was 10 per cent, valued at Rs 410 crore.
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Gammon India: Rs 200 crore orders in the bag
Mumbai: The Indian construction major, Gammon India Ltd (GIL), has notched up an income of Rs 287.5 crore and a net profit of Rs 6.13 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal. During the nine-month period ending December 2003, the company achieved sales worth Rs 786 crore and a net profit of Rs 18.94 crore, as against Rs 730 crore and Rs 18.83 crore during the 2002-03 financial year respectively.

The company has also announced that it has bagged three orders worth Rs 200 crore. While the Gujarat Water Supply and Sewerage Board has awarded a Rs 131-crore order to build and operate the distribution network for a water supply project in Surendranagar district, BHEL has offered a Rs 52-crore contract for construction of a cooling tower and chimney at Bellary.
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GAIL will expand telecom infrastructure
Kolkata: The country's largest natural gas transmission company has GAIL (India) Ltd will invest Rs 75 crore in the expansion of its telecommunications infrastructure in South India. According to the company its telecommunications business, will now be transformed into a strategic business unit and may subsequently, be hived off as a separate company. GAIL, which already has a 8,000 km-long optical fibre cable network connecting more than 70 cities and towns across the country - from Delhi to Hyderabad via Mumbai and Pune, will over the next one year, extend the connectivity to other cities in South India such as Bangalore and Chennai.

The company has already made an investment of Rs 250 crore in telecommunications infrastructure, which runs alongside its 4,600 km-long gas pipeline network. According to the company, its telecom backbone has a designed capacity of 160 gbps. Of its activated capacity of 2.5 gbps, 1,200 mbps capacity was being sold to around dozen-telecom service providers including VSNL, Tata Tele Services and Escotel. The company says it was awaiting the Centre's nod for getting into the LPG retailing business.
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PTC: Trading 10,000 MW surplus power
Kolkata: Power Trading Corporation (PTC) will start negotiations with captive power producers (CPPs) in order to trade the estimated 10,000 MW surplus power that the CPPs have. According to the PTC, trading with power produced by CPPs has now become possible under the Electricity Act 2003, and a `pool' of about 7,000 MW seemed to be readily available from the CPPs.

PTC, which was set up in 1999, is now the leading provider of power trading services, and has been identified as the nodal trading agency for cross border trading. Currently, Tata Power Company is its single largest shareholder with a holding of 16.39 per cent. Currently, four of PTC's promoters — Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd, Power Finance Corporation Ltd and National Hydro Electric Power Corporation Ltd each have a holding of 13.11 per cent.
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Infosys' second Chennai centre
Chennai: Infosys Technologies Ltd. today laid the foundation stone for its software development centre at Mahindra City in Maraimalai Nagar. In the first phase, Infosys plans to invest about Rs 250 crore in the centre. When fully developed, the centre will have a built up area of 3.5 million sq. ft with 25,000 seats and will involve a total investment of Rs 1,250 crore, according to a press release issued by Mahindra City.

The release said Infosys started its Chennai operations in 1995 and had invested about Rs 100 crore in the campus at Sholinganallur. Exports from the Chennai centre stood at Rs 742 crore for the year ending December 31, 2003. Mahindra City was being developed as an integrated township with an investment of over Rs 300 crore in land and basic infrastructure.
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JLETS Technologies gets Nepalese contract
New Delhi: JLETS Technologies, an Indian Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software development company, will develop census indicators of Nepal. by the country's government. The company, which has developed simple maps for small and medium enterprises, will provide census information along with map data for better understanding of various indicators such as demography, education and health, to government organisations in Nepal.
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Orient Info links up with Talisma
Bangalore: CRM solutions provider Talisma Corporation says it has partnered with Orient Information Technology Ltd to tap the West Asian market of the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Orient, has been operating in the region for close to a decade and derives about 65 per cent of its over Rs 60-crore revenue from the region.
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DRM environment for God's own subscribers
Kochi: Next Gen Media Alliances Ltd, an end-to-end digital rights management solutions company, has entered into an agreement with the mobile service provider Escotel, to offer mobile content to its subscribers in Kerala. Escotel subscribers will now have access to high quality ring tones, movie logos and much more at Rs 10 per request under the secure Digital Rights Management enabled environment.
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Coca-Cola's Olympic torchbearers
Mumbai: Coca-Cola India announced the launch of its Olympic Torch Bearer nomination program to select 42 torchbearers and seven escort runners to participate in the global relay of the Olympic Flame on June 10. The program will include essay competitions for school students, a radio phone-in nomination programme and key account activation in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad. The program will revolve around the theme `Recognise Inspiration' and nominations will be screened by a panel of judges and those chosen will be invited to New Delhi by Coca-Cola to participate in the event.
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DHL: Sponsor for fashion seminars
Mumbai: DHL, the express and logistics player, will organise and sponsor the `Business of Fashion Seminar Series' in association with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI). The seminar series will be held during the Lakme India Fashion Week 2004 will address the opportunities available in the WTO regime under the topic `Indian Apparel and Garment Industry - emerging powerhouse.' A McKinsey study commissioned by DHL predicts that the global textile and apparel industry is likely to grow to $248 billion by 2008. India is expected to garner $16 billion of this market, increasing her share to 6.5 per cent from 4 per cent currently.
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