Punj Lloyd to set up new company for engg services
New Delhi: Punj Lloyd plans to set up a new company to consolidate its engineering skills under one entity and expand its services, said industry officials.

The new company may be based in the Delhi NCR region, and the company will integrate the engineering expertise of its two recent acquisitions, Singapore-based SembCorp Engineers & Constructions (now known as Sembawang Engineers & Constructors) and Manchester-based Simon Carves, with that of Punj Lloyd's to form a new company that will take on the backlog jobs of the group as well as scout for fresh projects.

Punj Lloyd operates in 19 countries, with 75 per cent of its business in the overseas market.

Before the acquisitions, Punj Lloyd was outsourcing part of its engineering work, but now has in-house expertise in most aspects of infrastructure development including airports, seaports, hospitals, commercial and residential buildings. The new company is being planned as an independent profit centre, sources said.
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Reliance to pipe natural gas to TN in next 2-3 years
Chennai: Reliance Industries is planning to pipe natural gas to Tamil Nadu in 2-3 years time, according to Mukesh Ambani, chairman Reliance Industries. The plan is to create a southern corridor pipeline to bring to Tamil Nadu a portion of the reserves of natural gas available at the Krishna-Godavari basin.

Earlier, Reliance had announced plans to start gas production from the Krishna-Godavari blocks from the second quarter of 2008. It has also found significant quantities of gas in the KG-D6 block, an offshore deepwater location near Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh.

The company recently doubled its estimates of gas production from KG-D6 block to 80 million standard cubic meters of gas a day, following an investment of $5.2 billion. After supplying natural gas in Andhra Pradesh - Reliance would focus on Tamil Nadu Ambani said.

The benefit to the consumers would be that natural gas would be available at the doorstep 25-30 per cent cheaper than LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), he said.
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Salem Steel turnaround to begin January 2007
Chennai: Steel Authority of India's Alloy Steel Plant, Durgapur, will start supplying stainless steel slabs to Salem Steel Plant (SSP) beginning next year. This may mean the beginning of a new chapter in SSP's life, perhaps the beginning of its turnaround.

Last year, SSP incurred Rs 65-crore loss, after only two years of making profits. The company faces the problem that its raw material suppliers (like Jindal Stainless and Shah Alloys) are also its competitors for the end products. SSP had to completely depend upon them for stainless steel slabs and had no control over the prices.

In order to address this problem, SAIL had decided to get into stainless steel manufacturing. Capacities were planned to be put up both at ASP, Durgapur and at SSP. Investments in the former were made earlier and ASP, from January, will be in a position to supply the slabs to SSP. The expansion project should be completed by 2009, after which SSP will have a stainless steel making capacity of 1.8 lakh tonnes.

In addition, ASP will supply another 1.9 lakh tonnes to SSP. SSP therefore will have a capacity to roll 3.7 lakh tonnes of stainless steel. The project also includes enhancing the cold rolling capacity of SSP from 70,000 tonnes now to 1.45 lakh tonnes.
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Hutch to sign MoU with Gujarat government
Ahmedabad: Hutch Gujarat plans to set up world-class infrastructure in the state of Gujarat with an investment of Rs 2,500 crore over the next five years and has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Government of the state Gujarat for the purpose.

Sunil Sood, operations director, Hutch (Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra & Goa), said that Hutch, which has 3.5 million subscribers in the State, will deploy this amount for setting up a call centre that will employ 5,000 agents, apart from State-wide fibre-optic network, GSM-based cellular network and associated infrastructure, switching centres, retail points, high capacity microwave voice and data carriers, offices and training centres. The investment will generate 18,000 full-time jobs and create 65,000 indirect job opportunities.
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Nokia to launch WiMAX cable mobile in 2008
Bangalore: Finnish handset maker Nokia is betting on mobile WiMAX to take off in India, with operators seeing a huge demand for wireless broadband. Nokia is ready to offer its services as a technology partner to Indian cellular operators wishing to set up WiMAX networks.

The company plans to launch the first WiMAX capable mobile in 2008. Currently, Nokia has a portfolio of over 20 3G (third generation) handsets and now plans to make several handsets of the N series category capable of tapping into a WiMAX network for broadband Internet. Tablet devices such as Nokia N770 are expected to be among the first devices to support WiMAX. As the country jogs into the wireless Internet era, with Pune, Bangalore and Chennai getting WiMAXed, the need for such devices will rise.

Partnering with Intel, the firm is helping accelerate the development, adoption and deployment of standards-based mobile WiMAX technology across the world.
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Wipro to support Vista
Bangalore: Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista has been made available for business users in India and will be available to home users by early January 30, 2007. Wipro Technologies has also announced its readiness to help customers adopt Microsoft's newly released 2007 Microsoft Office system, Exchange Server 2007 and the Windows Vista operating system.

Microsoft India also announced that Office 2007 is available to enterprises, while Exchange Server 2007 will follow for release by the second week in December.

While Vista has seen over 5 lakh users of its Beta version, Office 2007 Beta 2 has seen over 3.5 lakh users, said the company in a release. Over 1,500 partners have developed 40 plus solutions for the operating system. One such is Wipro's proprietary `EZDeploy' solution. "EZDeploy" helps reduce the time, complexity and cost of PC deployment, maintenance and security updates.

The company also developed Industry Accelerators (IA), which cover the spectrum of the Microsoft Office system products including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Business Scorecard Manager 2005, Live Communication Server 2005, Enterprise Search, and Knowledge Network Server and include features like Enterprise Search, Records Management, Office Communicator, and Enterprise Content Management.
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TCS gets $100mn deal from Bank of China
Beijing: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has won a $100 million deal from the state-run Bank of China (BOC) being dubbed as one of the major IT-related deals signed by a Chinese bank ahead of the opening up of the country's banking sector to foreign competition by December 11 under Beijing's commitment to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), industry sources said.

Under the deal, the Indian IT giant will provide a range of banking solutions to BOC though the details are not yet known.

Meanwhile, TCS and its Chinese partners are expected to get their business licence soon for their Beijing-based joint venture, another milestone in the company's bid to expand its global footprint.

The joint venture company will be located in Beijing's Zhongguancun Software Park (z-Park) and will provide IT services and solutions to China's domestic market as well as other major markets like Japan, the rest of Asia-Pacific region, US, and Europe.
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Volkswagen may select Apollo tyres for small car
Mumbai: Tyre maker Apollo Tyres is in talks with German car major Volkswagen for supplying tyres to the proposed small car that the former will launch in the next two years.

Apollo's new passenger and truck-bus radial factory, which is scheduled to come up in Tamil Nadu in the next five years, will make the company self-sufficient to cater to the demand from Volkswagen and also from the open market.

Volkswagen had firmed up its plans to set up a car plant in Chakan near Pune and is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra government by the next week.
Apollo Tyres' share of sales to Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), such as car companies, is 30 per cent and remaining through sales to car owners, better known as after market sales.
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Vedanta refinery gets go ahead
Mumbai: The Anil Agarwal promoted Vedanta group's Rs3,600-crore alumina refinery in Orissa's Kalahandi district is likely to get clearance.

Aanel appointed by the Supreme Court gave its approval to the project in October. The apex court had set up the panel following opposition by environmental groups.

Vedanta had signed an agreement with the Orissa government in 2004 to set up an alumina refinery in bauxite-rich Lanjigarh of Kalahandi, one of the poorest areas in the country and home to the primitive tribe Dongaria Kondh.

Vedanta got the mining rights to bauxite required for the alumina refinery, which was opposed by environmentalist groups and tribals.

The activists opposed the project on the grounds that mining in the Niyamgiri hills would displace thousands of tribals and harm the fragile eco-system of the region. The refinery project is dependent on the availability of 3 million tonnes of bauxite from the densely forested Niyamgiri hills.
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Vishal Mega Mart plans expansion
New Delhi: Vishal Mega Mart will set up 80 more hypermarket stores at an investment of Rs 480 crore in the next financial year taking its total number of stores to 126.

Of the proposed 80 stores, more than 15 would be launched in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kochi.

Vishal Mega Mart would also launch hypermarkets in Chandigarh, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kolkata, Ludhiana and Vadodara by the mid of 2007. The Rs288 crore company has 46 stores at present in 34 cities in northern and western regions. In the south, it has presence in Hyderabad.
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Car makers want uniform excise duty on all sizes
New Delhi: saying that the present duty structure on passenger cars is not favourable and created market distortions, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota and General Motors have sought extension of excise duty concessions on small cars to medium and big cars. Only Maruti Udyog has made no appeals to the effect.

The companies have prevailed upon the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the apex auto industry body, to seek a uniform excise duty structure on all types of cars and mutli-utility vehicles.

The demand for uniform excise duty structure has become louder as the government has started work on the Budget proposals for 2007-08. While Maruti chose not to make an official comment on the matter, other car companies emphasised that the current excise duty structure should be made uniform.
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