Sterlite Tech Plans 1,200 Cr Investment For New OFC Plants

NEW DELHI: Buoyed by growth in net profit, optical fibre firm Sterlite Tech plans to invest up to 1,200 crore to scale up its optical fibre cable production in two years.

"Earlier we had announced increase of OFC production to 30 million route kilometres from 22 million but based on growth demand we have decided to scale it up to 50 million Rkm with investment of 1,000-1,200 crore by mid-2019," Sterlite Tech CEO Anand Agarwal told PTI.

He said that around 15 million Rkm facility entailing investment of about Rs 1,000 crore will be build in India and the rest in China.

"This will be a greenfield facility. We will decide on locations in three months," Agarwal said.

The company today posted 16.27 pct jump in net profit to Rs 63.66 crore for the March quarter mainly on account of demand for fibre to build high speed networks.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 54.75 crore in the January-March period of the previous fiscal, 2015-16.

"We are seeing huge demand for high speed networks across globe. Our exports increased 75 pct from about 550 crore to 950 crore in 2016-17. For Sterlite, there has been good growth in Europe, China and Middle East in overseas markets," Agarwal said.

The company crossed the milestone of transforming digital infrastructure in over 100 countries and enabled the creation of smarter broadband networks in some of the toughest terrains of the world, including in Iceland, Amazonian rain forests and Jammu and Kashmir during 2016-17

Agarwal said that the company has order book of 3,018 crore which includes Rs 1,000 crore of orders from international market.

The revenue of Sterlite Tech increased by 15 pct during the reported quarter at 707 crore, from Rs 614 crore in the corresponding quarter of 2015-16.

For 2016-17, Sterlite Tech registered 31 pct increase in net profit at Rs 201 crore compared to 154 crore at the end of fiscal year 2016.

The annual revenue of the company grew by 14 pct to 2,594 crore from 2,275 crore during the period under review.

The company stock closed at 154.4 a unit, down 1.44 pct, on BSE. 

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