IJM commissions welded wire mesh plant

Hyderabad: IJM Steel Products, a subsidiary of Malaysia-based $1.2-billion IJM Corporation Berhad, commissioned its first welded wire mesh (WWM) manufacturing facility at Isnapur village near Hyderabad at an outlay of Rs 21 crore.

'WWM for concrete reinforcement is new to the Indian construction industry. The manufactured product comes to the site ready for immediate onsite installation, contributing to higher productivity and better quality control.

We are confident that MMW is set to revolutionise the infrastructure and the real estate industry in India, which builds close to 1.5 million housing units a year,' Krishnan Tan, chief executive officer and managing director of IJM Corporation, said.

The WWM facility in Hyderabad at present has one production line with an annual capacity of 12,000 tonne.

The company plans to add another line in the third year of operation. IJM currently operates around 100 MMW production lines in Malaysia.

'We have signed up IJM (India) Infrastructure Limited as our first customer. We wanted to first use our WWM product at our ongoing housing projects — a 120-acre project in Vijayawada and a 42-acre residential project in Nagpur to create confidence among the Indian customers. We expect the Hyderabad facility to garner revenues of Rs 35 crore this year,' Tan said, adding the company also planned to set up similar production lines in Mumbai.

In India, IJM through IJM Concrete Products, operates five ready-mix concrete batching plants in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. A sixth plant is under construction in Mumbai.