Bajaj Electricals buys 32 pc stake in Starlite

Mumbai, Mar 13 (UNI) Bajaj Electricals Ltd has acquired 32 per cent stake in Starlite Lighting Ltd to ease sourcing of energy-saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), market sources today said.

Bajaj Electricals, with no production facility of its own, had been sourcing CFLs from Starlite and other vendors.

It bought 4 million shares in Starlite, based in Maharashtra.

''With this acquisition, what we get is a substantial stake in a running company with a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant and a ready-made market for CFLs,'' Executive Director R Ramakrishnan told UNI. He, however, declined to give the value of the deal.

Starlite has a production capacity of 10 million CFLs per annum, 50 per cent of which is exported. ''Starlite has a weak domestic distribution, but we have an outstanding distribution network in the domestic market,'' he said. Starlite supplies lighting to Sweden-based furniture retailer IKEA and other supermarket chains in Europe.

''Currently our requirement for CFLs is 5-6 million pieces per annum.'' Bajaj would be selling the CFLs under its own brand name in India and overseas. He said Bajaj expects to get a good chunk of the European market now.

The acquisition is expected to start impacting its revenues from the next financial year. For the first half of the year to September 2006, lighting products contributed 1.17 billion rupees to Bajaj Electricals revenues, about 50 per cent of the total, he added.

UNI