SVIL Mines to open 300 retail outlets

New Delhi, Sept 18 (UNI) SVIL Mines Ltd, a part of Floriana Group will soon open 300 franchise-owned company operated retail outlets across India to introduce pre-polished and open book marble for the customers.

The company will come out with five such exclusive stores in the next two days at Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangaluru for customers to experience the products, which will be available under the brand 'Floriana concept marble'.

''The 300 exclusive stores will be opened in a single day. The marbles as thin as three mm will be made available,'' SVIL Mines Director Rajan Kaicker told reporters here.

The company, established in 1993, has set up the world's largest integrated marble processing plant in collaboration with Italy-based GEO SRL at Katni, Madhya Pradesh.

The plant has a capacity to produce 5.9 million square metres (60 million square feet) of marble slabs and tiles per annum, which will be scaled up to 100 million square metres by 2012.

Currently, with a turnover of Rs 1,500 crore, the Floriana Group is likely to foray into hospitality, education and power generation sector.

''The current marble industry is Rs 150 crore sq ft per annum and we are slated to grow at eight per cent with an incremental growth of one per cent per year,'' Mr Kaicker said adding that finance facility, arranty and after sales maintainence will be provided to the customers.

In the industry, profit margins are very high as the cost of processing of marble is not too high, he added.

The group has invested Rs 450 crore in state-of-the-art patented Italian technology for processing of marble.

UNI