Gujarat NRE Coke goes after oil

Ahmedabad, Oct 1 (UNI) Gujarat NRE Coke created corporate history of sorts when it declared a bonus issue in the ratio of 11:10 and rewarded the shareholders further with a dividend of 20 per cent in its very first year of commercial operations in 1996.

And a company that focuses on coke has come out with prospect for oil now. It has signed an MoU with the Australian government on September 26, 2006 and would have access to a virgin block of 10,000 sq kms in western Australia where prospecting work would begin shortly, said Vice-Chairman and MD Arun Kumar Jagatramka here yesterday.

The company has investments in prospecting companies like Zelos Resources, Resource Pacific, Rey Resources and Pollution Resources. It has also purchased a NZ dollar 20 million shareholding in Pike River Coal Company Ltd, a subsidiary of New Zealand Oil and Gas Ltd.

The company started its journey in Kolkata with the primary aim of setting up a plant for manufacturing low ash metallurgical coke in the western part of India, where there had been a traditional demand-supply mismatch. The initial foray into manufacturing was financed by term loans and an initial public issue of 8.80 lakh equity shares of Rs 10 each for cash at par aggregating to Rs 88 lakh.

The issue opened on May 16, 1994 and was oversubscribed by more than six times. Armed with the issue proceeds and the CFRI developed beehive, non-recovery process technology, the company set up its first plant in Khambalkia, Jamnagar, Gujarat which went operational in a phased manner from 1995.

In 2004, the company exported the first ever coke consignment from India, to Brazil and subsequently to South Africa. It further exported coke to Italy in June 2005. At present, the company, which is the largest, independent, non-captive manufacturer of LAMC in India, has three manufacturing facilities in India with a combined installed capacity of producing 14 lakh tonnes of LAMC per annum. The Kolkata-based company's Indian customers are, primarily, integrated steel plants, foundries producing ferro-alloys, pig iron, engineering goods, soda ash and zinc units, and chemical industries apart from customers in Brazil, South Africa and Europe.

Throughout this journey, the company, whose tag 'NRE' stands for Natural Resources and Environment,' used environment-friendly and pollution-free non-recovery coke-making technology, with provision for heat recovery developed indigenously and comparable with the best in the world in this category.

Indian imports of coking coal of around 220 lakh tonnes per annum are expected to rise up to 640 lakh tonnes by 2011-12, demands will further increase by India's own mission to manufacture 100 million tonnes of steel by 2020 and the journey of Gujarat NRE Coke will continue further.

UNI