Orient Ceramics mulls more outsourcing, joint venture deals

Hyderabad, Feb 15 (PTI) Orient Ceramics and IndustriesLtd (OCIL), India''s largest ceramic tile manufacturer, ismulling more outsourcing and joint venture deals to meet thegrowing demands, a top company executive said today.

According to Madhur Daga, Executive Director, OCIL,the company, which acquired Bell Ceramics last year, is on thepath of improving capacity utilisations significantly.

While Bell Ceramics has 14.5 million square meters ofcapacity at two locations � Dora in Gujarat and Hospeta inKarnataka, OCIL has around 15 million square meters plant atSikunderabad in Uttar Pradesh. The total installed capacitynow stands at 29 million square meters.

"In a bid to meet the burgeoning domestic demandfollowing revival in the real estate and property markets, thecompany is currently pursuing outsourcing deals with severalceramic manufacturers. We will supervise the quality controlat the outsourced facilities while entering into contractmanufacturing arrangements," Daga told reporters here.

Vijay Shankar Sharma, Chief Financial Officer, OCIL,said though several ailing ceramic makers with qualitymanufacturing facilities were approaching them and offeringmerger, the company right now had no such plans.

The company is currently in talks with several ceramicmanufacturers for outsourcing deals and with some of them forjoint venture arrangements, he said.

Sharma, however, could not specify timeframe for jointventures and said the company expects to firm up a fewoutsourcing deals in the next quarter. .