Goldstone Infra to build 5-MW solar power plant

Hyderabad: Goldstone Infratech Limited (formerly Goldstone Teleservices Limited), the country's largest manufacturer and supplier of composite insulators, is foraying into the renewal energy space by setting up a 5-MW solar power plant at an outlay of Rs 120 crore.

Besides, it is in the process of setting up a 40Mw-per-year capacity photo voltaic modules facility within its composite (polymer) compounds manufacturing plant at Charlapalli on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

“We are at present on the look out for 20 acres of land around Hyderabad for the solar power plant. The project requires an investment of Rs 120 crore with an equity-debt ratio of Rs 30 crore and Rs 90 crore, and we expect the project to be up and running by March-April 2009,” P Sashikumar, managing director of Goldstone Infratech, told Business Standard.

Stating that the global market for photovoltaic modules is extremely positive and with the Indian government giving significant importance to renewable sources of energy by extending incentives, he said the company decided that the time was ripe for it to enter this space via solar power generation.

“We are negotiating with a couple of European and US solar energy developers for setting up a 40Mw photovoltaic modules plant on a turnkey basis. The project, entailing an investment of Rs 35 crore, would be executed in two phases,” Sashikumar said.

Work on phase-I of the project, to produce 20Mw of modules, will involve Rs 7 crore through internal accruals or private equity placement, and Rs 13 crore debt. It will start commercial production in the next eight to nine months.

The company would initiate work on phase-II in six months from now, he added.

According to him, the company would primarily be targeting the European and the US markets for its photovoltaic modules and expects to garner Rs 160 crore revenues by utilising 50 per cent of the installed capacity of the phase-I in the first year of operations.

Goldstone Infratech Limited, touted as the only company in India to have facilities for manufacturing polymer compounds for complete range of insulators from 11Kv to 400 Kv, expects to close the current financial year with over Rs 60 crore, as against Rs 30 crore in the previous fiscal.