International Steel Institute panel to visit Jamshedpur
Mumbai: Members of the Technology Committee of the International Iron and Steel Institute are expected to visit the plant of Tata Steel at Jamshedpur. The members are from 16 countries - Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, US, UK, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, The Netherlands and host India.

Major steel producers represented in the meeting included Mittal Steel, Arcelor, Nippon Steel, Posco, BaoSteel, ThyssenKrupp, & Corus. The current chairman of the Technology Committee is Dr T. Mukherjee, Deputy Managing Director (Steel), Tata Steel.

The members will also visit the Usha Martin plant where sponge iron produced in rotary kilns and hot metal coming out of mini blast furnaces are fed into electric arc furnaces for producing steel.
The next meeting of the Technology Committee will be held at Buenos Aires in April 2006.
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Unichem to market products in Brazil post approval
Mumbai: Following the regulatory approvals that the company's plants have got recently from Brazil, Unichem Laboratories Ltd will now be able to market its products in Brazil.

The company's formulation facility at Goa and Baddi have received Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certificates from the Brazilian Regulatory Authority, ANVISA (Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria), the company told the BSE. With this approval, Unichem will be able to market its products in Brazil through its wholly owned subsidiary, Unichem Farmaceutica Do Brasil Ltda.

The Goa and Baddi facilities also have approvals from regulatory authorities in the UK, South Africa and Australia.
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Strides Arcolab is largest Indian company in LatAm market
Bangalore: After acquiring a controlling stake in its Latin American venture, Strides Arcolab has said tahtit has become the largest Indian pharma company to operate in the lucrative $22-billion LatAm market.

Strides has acquired an additional stake of 12.5 per cent at a cost of $6 million in its joint venture, Strides Latina, from its Brazilian partner, Elcemar Almeida & Associates. It now owns 52.5 per cent or controlling stake in the joint venture.

The Bangalore company's sales from its LatAm operations (from Brazil and Mexico) stand at Rs195 crore (about $45 million) for the 12-month period ended September 2004.

Brazilian entity Cellofarma is fully owned by Strides Latina, which has a 74-per cent stake in Mexican company Solara, SA de C.V. With the manufacturing facilities in Brazil and Mexico, Strides is now a strong regional player in this market, having strong management, sales and manufacturing capabilities with technologies and products from India.
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Amtek board okays Sigma buy
New Delhi: Amtek India Ltd has said that its board has approved a plan to buy the entire equity stake in Sigma Cast Group of the UK for an undisclosed amount. In a statement to the BSE, Amtek India said that its plan to buy all of Sigma is subject to clearance from the Reserve Bank of India.

Sigma is one of the world's largest suppliers of turbo charger components for automobiles.
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Beeyu Overseas to buy tea factory in Lanka
Kolkata: Beeyu Overseas Ltd, a city-based tea company is planning to acquire a tea factory in Sri Lanka. The company is also increasing the capacity of its tea factory in Udhagamandalam.

Beeyu Overseas said that as a tea company operating mostly in the international market it would survive only if it has a presence in several markets. As the company is already operating in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka is the next favoured destination.

At present, there are 800 tea factories in Sri Lanka, of which 400 are bought-leaf factories and the remaining 400 are along the tea estates. The Government owns all tea estates in Sri Lanka. Beeyu Overseas is planning to buy a one-million-kg factory, the estimated price of which would be Rs2 crore. It hopes to complete the deal by the end of March this year.

Meanwhile, the company is expanding its present production capacity from 3,000 tonnes to 6,000 tonnes a year, in the first phase, and then to 9,000 tonnes a year, in the second phase. With the expanded capacity in place, the cost of conversion from green leaf to tea would come down to Rs8 a kg from the Rs12 a kg. The cost of the project is Rs13 crore.

To fund this project, Beeyu Overseas is coming out with a Rs10-crore public issue, its second, probably this month. The company has already filed its draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchanges Board of India. The remaining Rs3 crore would be a term loan from State Bank of India. The expanded capacity would make Beeyu Overseas the third largest tea producer in South India.

Beeyu Overseas is currently exporting 4,000 tonnes of tea.
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Bajaj Hind to set up distillery
Mumbai: Bajaj Hindustan Ltd has informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that its board has approved the setting up of a new distillery of 160 kl per day capacity at a cost of Rs60 crore. This would take the company's aggregate distillery capacity from 145 kl per day to 305 kl per day, an official statement said.

According to it, the board has also approved the raising of up to $200 million from the international or domestic markets by way of issuing GDRs, FCCBs or private placement, in one or more tranches.
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MRPL in one year contracts with Saudi Aramco and Iranian NIOC
Mumbai: MRPL has signed one-year contracts to buy crude oil from Saudi Aramco and National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). It has agreed to buy a total of 7.5 million tonnes of crude oil from the two oil companies in 2005-06.

While MRPL has signed up for the purchase of 2.5 million tonnes or 44,000 barrels a day of Arab mix crude from Aramco, it will buy five million metric tonnes from NIOC. MRPL is a subsidiary of ONGC.

MRPL does not buy any of its 9.69 million tonnes requirements from the spot market. These two contracts will fulfil most of its need.
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Matrix Labs into alliance with Chinese company
Hyderabad: Matrix Laboratories Ltd (MLL) has entered into a strategic alliance with MCHEM Pharma Group Ltd of China to access the advantage China provids in sourcing pharmaceutical chemicals and intermediates.

The MLL Chairman and CEO, N. Prasad, and MCHEM Pharma Group Chairman, Mark Gao, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Sunday to this effect in Singapore, according to a Matrix press release here on Monday.

The MoU would help Matrix to backward integrate into China for manufacture of intermediates and to consolidate its position as a major supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) worldwide, the release said.

Based in Xiamen on the East coast of China, MCHEM manufactures pharmaceutical products ranging from basic chemicals, intermediates, active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished dosage forms, apart from having interests in distribution of pharmaceutical products in China.

MCHEM group is a major supplier of finished dosage forms of anti-AIDS products to the Chinese Government. The Medicines Control Council (MCC), South Africa, approved its finished dosage forms facility. MCHEM group, with a sales turnover of $35-million in 2003, focuses on therapeutic categories such as anti-AIDS, CNS, Cardiovascular and Oncology.
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Ashok Leyland doubles exports
Chennai: Ashok Leyland has reported a seventeen per cent increase in its sales in January, compared with the same month last year.

In the April-Jan period of the current year, the company sold 41,872 vehicles against 37,503 in the corresponding period last year.

Exports nearly doubled to 4,970 units against 2,531 units previously.
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Tata Motors vehicle sales up by 22.5 per cent
Mumbai: Tata Motors has reported total vehicle sales of 39,000 vehicles in January 2005, an increase of 22.5 per cent over 31,840 vehicles sold in January, 2004. During the April-January period, the company sold 3,18,156 vehicles including exports as compared to 2,48,744 units sold in the year-ago period.

The company achieved its highest ever-domestic passenger vehicle sales of 18,054 numbers in January 2005 surpassing its previous best of 16,332 vehicles achieved in October 2004.

Passenger vehicle sales in January 2005 grew by 23 per cent from the year-ago period. Cumulative sales for the current fiscal so far stood at 1,43,050 vehicles, a growth of 28 per cent over the year-ago period. In ten months, passenger vehicle sales have crossed the full year 2003/2004 sales of 1,40,018 vehicles.

Domestic sales of commercial vehicles grew by 17.5 per cent in January 2005 to 17,003 units. In the April-January period, commercial vehicle sales stood at 1,51,884 units, higher by 27.5 per cent from the year-ago period's 1,19,092 units.

Medium and Heavy Commercial Vehicle (M & HCV) sales in January 2005 were 11,579 numbers, a growth of 20 per cent over January of 2004. Cumulative sales for the current fiscal stood at 1,03,694 vehicles, up by 29 per cent.

LCV sales in January 2005 were 5,424 units, up by 13 per cent over 4,808 units sold in January of 2004. Cumulative sales stood at 48,170 numbers, higher by 24 per cent over the year-ago period.

Indica sales grew by 32 per cent with January numbers at 10,650 cars and cumulative sales at 85,313 cars, up by 32 per cent. Indigo family sales for January 2005 grew by 11 per cent to 3342 cars and sales for April-January period stood at 31,203 cars.
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Tata Tele and Sivaji Productions in promotion deal
Chennai: Tata Teleservices Ltd and Sivaji Productions have entered into "an understanding" to promote each other's products, and the mutual effort will kick off with Sivaji Production's film, Chandramukhi, a Rajnikant starrer.

The film will have footage that is expected to show the Tata Indicom brand while Tata Teleservices will promote the movie through its outdoor visual media. The company has 75,000 sq ft of space in Chennai alone. Neither will pay the other any money.

The promotion campaign will start in early March and go on till mid-May. He added that the agreement was based on "mutual trust" and that there were no written covenants about how much of publicity each will give the other. Currently, the arrangement is only for Tamil Nadu, but talks are on for extending this to other States too.

In addition to `huge cut-outs and hoardings', Tata Indicom will promote the movie through special screensavers, ring tones, and movie clips that will be made available to its subscribers.
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