RIL in Rs288-cr bid for Super Bazar
Mumbai: Reliance Industries has submitted a Rs288-crore bid to revive shopping cooperative store Super Bazar, that has several shops in and around Delhi. The Indian Labour Cooperative Society along with Indian Potash Ltd had put in a bid of Rs70 crore.

The cooperative has been put for sale after the Supreme Court asked the central government to explore ways for its revival. The Centre holds more than a 50 per cent stake in Super Bazar.

An evaluation committee constituted by the court favoured Reliance getting the bid on account of its financial capacity and development plan for reviving the cooperative, documents submitted by the panel to the court showed.

The panel's recommendations have been forwarded to the Supreme Court, which is expected to take a final decision at the next hearing.

Reliance proposes to invest Rs60 crore in the share capital of Super Bazar and another Rs85 crore in the working capital. It will spend Rs143 crore to revamp the chain, and expand its operations to include retailing of pharmaceuticals, fruit and vegetables, online shopping, and institutional sales.
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"Cola drinks are safe": Coke, Pepsi
After the state of Kerala banned the sale of Cola drinks cola companies Coke and Pepsi have reiterated their stance saying their products are absolutely safe and meet every safety standard set by food, health and regulatory bodies in India and all over the world.

Reacting to the ban, the Coca-Cola Co. said, "Consumer safety is most important to us. The soft drinks manufactured by the company in India comply with all stringent national as well as international norms."

All products from the Coca-Cola Company, "are completely safe and fully meet all the chemical, microbiological safety parameters prescribed by the regulatory bodies in the country," the company statement said: "soft drinks are primarily made of water, sugar and concentrate. Each of these three major ingredients meets all the existing and proposed standards here are no methodologies that have been validated by any international body to test pesticides in soft drinks anywhere in the world."

It said the company gets its products and raw materials tested regularly at recognised and independent national and international labs such as Vimta (Hyderabad), Central Science Lab (London) and MWH (USA) to fully ensure that soft drinks consistently meet all possible consumer safety norms.

"Our existing manufacturing processes, quality and safety testing methodologies are stringent enough to ensure that our soft drinks already comply with the proposed norms which are yet to be notified by the regulators," the statement added.
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Ranbaxy to consolidate manufacturing activity in Europe
New Delhi: Ranbaxy Laboratories is consolidating production activity in Europe and the CIS countries. As part of this the company has decided to divest the manufacturing facility of Ranbaxy Ireland located in Cashel, Ireland, as a going concern, a statement by Ranbaxy said and added that there were significant efficiencies to be gained from consolidating the company's European operation in Romania. The company has been using the Ireland unit as a tablet formulation facility.

The sale of the unit is consistent with the company's strategy to make Romania the strategic hub for markets in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, it added.

Company officials declined to divulge financial details of sale but said the whole plant in Ireland has been put up for sale.
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HC asks Hutchison, Essar to settle dispute through arbitration
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has ordered an Arbitration Tribunal to be set up within 30 days for the settlement of disputes between Essar and Hutchison on the termination of BPL (Mumbai) circle sale deal by the former. The Court declined to put a stay on the plea of Hutchison-Essar on the termination of the sale deal and restrained Essar from selling the BPL circle to a third party.

Once the arbitration tribunal is set up in the next four weeks, it would consider and verify whether the injunction order of restraining Essar from selling BPL Mumbai circle to third party is valid. On August 1, Essar called off the deal to sell BPL Mumbai Circle to its telecom joint venture Hutchison-Essar citing absence of necessary government approvals. Although, Essar offered to return the Rs 1,617 crore taken as deposit in lieu of selling 97.5 per cent stake in BPL's Mumbai circle to Hutchison-Essar, the Bombay High Court had said that the five-day period would start only after court's verdict.

According to the recent verdict, the five-day period to return the money by Essar would start only after the Arbitration Tribunal vacates the order restraining Essar from selling the BPL shares to a third party.
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Production at GM's Halol plant halted due to rains
New Delhi: Work has been stalled at General Motors' (GM) Halol plant in Gujarat due to heavy rains that lashed the State, according to General Motors India vice-president P Balendran. He added that things were gradually gradually limping back to normal. Balendran said daily production at the plant was 172 vehicles and added that sales and movement of finished products was severely hit due to the rains.

He said sales would be affected in August as Gujarat, Maharashtra, two of the big markets, were hit hard by the heavy rains. He said while the plant was not affected by the rains, water had entered the stockyard area. He said that no estimate had been done so far of the damages or financial losses.
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Tata Motors plans mini truck launch
Bhopal: Tata Motors plans to introduce a passenger model of Tata Ace.

Ace had received stupendous response with over 42,000 units plying on the road since its launch in five States in May 2005. The ergonomically designed vehicle has set a trend in the commercial vehicle industry as the country's first high performance, low maintenance, safe and reliable mini truck with sporty car-like features to ensure comfort in ride and handling.
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IOC to offer Kuwait co stake in two projects
New Delhi: Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) plans to offer Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) a stake in its integrated (15 million tonnes) refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Paradip as well as in naphtha cracker and downstream polymer complex at Panipat. However till now no formal proposal has been provided by IOC to KPC in this regard.

KPC's equity participation would minimize IOC's risk involved in the project as the Kuwaiti firms' international experience in pursuing such mega projects would benefit the Indian company. IOC had executed a memorandum of understanding with KPC in March 2006 for cooperation in trade of hydrocarbons, upstream oil and gas projects, downstream oil projects, research and development and training in India, Kuwait and in any other third country.
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Sadbhav Engg bags Rs560 cr order from AUDA
Mumbai: Sadbhav Engineering has bagged an order worth Rs 560 crore from Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) for undertaking construction work for a road in the city.
The secured order, to be executed on BOT (build operate and transfer) basis, entails strengthening and widening to four lanes the Sardar Patel Ring Road around Ahmedabad.

Shares of Sadbhav Engineering were trading at Rs335.85, up 9.99 per cent on the BSE today.
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Gas facilities, petrochem units in Gujarat shut for third day
New Delhi: Natural gas fields and petrochemical units remained shut for the third day due to massive floods in Gujarat. Oil and Natural Gas Corp's (ONGC) South Bassein and B-55 fields in Mumbai offshore remained shut for the third day in running and ONGC-Reliance-British Gas operated Panna/Mukta and Tapti fields did not produce any gas and was forced to cut oil production by 20,000 barrels per day after ONGC's Hazira gas processing facility in Gujarat was marooned.

A Reliance Industries' official said the company continued to keep its petrochemical plant at Hazira partially closed after torrential rains led to floods in the region. The Hazira gas processing plant received around 40.5 million standard cubic metres per day of gas from the Mumbai offshore fields. It processed this to produce 1,650 tonnes of LPG, 3,350 tonnes of aromatic naphtha, 417 tonnes of kerosene and 48 tonnes of diesel. The natural gas from these fields was fed mainly to power and fertilizer plants and CNG operations in Delhi.
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Volvo to position its products in premium segment
Kolkata: Volvo India, subsidiary of Swedish major Volvo, has launched a new series of Volvo FH and FM trucks. The company is targeting the premium bus and truck segments of the country and would not compete in the volumes segment with Indian manufacturers. The company said despite low sales volumes of Volvo in India, the company had been making profits since 2004. The company started Indian operations in 1998 by locating its manufacturing facility at Bangalore. Volvo has invested Rs 300 crore in Indian operations.

Last year Volvo India sold around 1000 buses and trucks and its annual production capacity for buses and trucks was 1250 units.
Volvo was also using India as a major component sourcing base for other facilities of the company worldwide. Last year, exports of components to Volvo facilities overseas were Euro 70 million, out of which 75 per cent were forgings and castings.
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Punj Lloyd receives Rs321-crore contract in Yemen
New Delhi: Punj Lloyd has received anorder worth Rs321 crore from Yemgas, for civil works at the LNG project in Yemen involving civil, mechanical, electrical and painting work for off sites and utilities of the Yemen LNG project from Yemgas, a joint venture formed by French Technip France, Japanese JGC Corporation and UK-based Kellogg- Brown and Root Inc.
The project would be completed in 28 months.

The company said the project is an important milestone for it. The company has looking at expanding its geographies and this order would help it further strengthen its foothold in the Middle East.

The project is being executed for Yemen LNG Company, the company formed by TOTAL, Yemen Gas Company, Hund Oil Exxon, Sunkyong and Hyundai, it said.
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Centre over-regulating telecom: Tata Group
Mumbai: Ratan Tata chairman of the Tata group said the government was unnecessarily regulating the telecom industry and forbidding its technological upgradation.

He said the Government's decision to change TTML's code numbers, resulted in loss of huge number of subscribers, as most of them were not ready to change their old numbers. He said telecom regulator TRAI imposed a Rs50 crore penalty on the company for Push-To-Talk call rate service which was implemented after providing detailed information to TRAI...despite which the company was fined.

He said Tata Teleservices had disconnected 32,000 subscribers in the last few months as their identification could not be completed.
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Thomas Cook India to acquire Thailand biz
Mumbai: Leading travel solutions company, Thomas Cook India plans to acquire the inbound business of Thomas Cook Thailand for 2.5 million euros (Rs14.5 crore) and also merge LKP Forex, a subsidiary of LKP Merchant Financing Ltd into itself. The company has received the Board's approval for the buyout.

The board at the meeting held today also approved the proposed amalgamation scheme, under which 11 equity shares of Rs10 each of Thomas Cook India would be allotted for every 20 shares of LKP Forex.

Thomas Cook India said its cumulative non-convertible redeemable preference shares (Class A) would be allotted for every one equity share of LKP Forex and its cumulative convertible Class B preference shares would be given for every 17 shares of LKP Forex.

Also, as per the swap ratio, cumulative convertible Class C preference shares of Thomas Cook of Rs10 each would be allotted for every 10 shares of LKP Forex of Rs10 each, it said
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Wipro looks at acquisitions in China
Bangalore: Wipro is eyeing more foreign acquisitions to accelerate growth and plans to expand operations in China, its chief financial officer said. NYSE listed Wipro that has Cisco and Nortel among its key clients has acquired six overseas companies since December last year with deals ranging between $20 million and $50 million.

According to officials Europe accounted for 24 per cent of Wipro's revenue in April-June and was growing faster than from the United States. Wipro's recent purchases included Finland's Saraware Oy for $31.90 million and US-based Quantech Global Services LLC.
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