Adarsh to diversify into windmill parts manufacturing

Ahmedabad: With wind power generation catching on, Anand-based Adarsh Plant Protect has decided to foray into manufacturing of windmill parts.

The company is constructing a new plant at Vallabh Vidyanagar where it would manufacture towers for windmills and masel frames among others.

Besides, it plans to construct another manufacturing plant at Vallabh Vidyanagar for battery-operated spray pumps.

The move is aimed at capturing the growing segment of farmers who are shifting to battery-operated spray pumps from the manually-operated ones, said Naishadbhai N Patel, chairman and managing director, Adarsh Plant Protect. The plant will have a capacity of 600 sprays per day.

Currently, the company's production capacity for manual spray pumps is 1,000-1,200 units per day. It would invest Rs 15-20 crore in the plant while the windmill parts plant will be built at a cost of Rs 10 crore.

'We will invest Rs 25-30 crore as part of our expansion plans. The products will start rolling out from the plants by the end of 2008. This is a good time to enter the battery-operated spray pump market since the state government is offering up to 50 per cent subsidy for the agriculture segment,' said Patel.

The company is looking at foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to fund the expansion apart from issuing preferential shares.

The total market for agricultural sprays in India is around Rs 300 crore of which battery operated sprays account for Rs 10-20 crore, said Patel. He added that the battery-operated spray segment was growing 20 per cent year-on-year.