Aksh Optifibre announces expansion plans

Aksh Optifibre Ltd, the country's second largest optic fiber
manufacturing company is set to expand their production capacity
with the investment of around Rs 107 crore. Rajiv Naik, CEO, Aksh
Optifibre announced this at a press conference in Mumbai. Aksh
plans to expand their present capacities of optical fiber cables
from 82,038 ckm to 2,10,000 ckm, their fiber capacity from
14,50,000 ckm by March 2002.

Speaking on the occasion Naik noted that Aksh had also acquired
BSNL for Rs 60 crore in the previous financial year and has
strong potential orders in the pipeline from China worth $ 200
million.

Presently Naik revealed that the worldwide demand of the optic
fiber is more than the production or supply of the optic fiber.
As far as the domestic market is concerned, the demand in the
year 2001-02 is going to be around 2.5 million fkm and Aksh's
contribution in the market is estimated to be around 5.30 million
fkm in the year 2001-02.

According to AK Ahuja, VP-Finance, Aksh the company's income are
expected to grow by 200 percent with the total turnover of Rs
4,350 million against Rs 1,449 million last year. The increase
exhibits 328 percent increase in income in the last two years.

Presently having three manufacturing plants, fourth one has
recently been set up at Ringus, Rajasthan. The recent plant is
said to be the world's largest FRP manufacturing plant in terms
of production. Besides this, the plant would be the one of its
kind to manufacture optic fibers, cables and FRP at the same
place.

Speaking to CNS, Chetan Choudhary, COO, Aksh revealed that with
the production increased to one million kms from the present
three million km by March 2002, Aksh would be the largest
manufacturer of the FRP in the world. He further noted that
around 60 percent of the fibers would be exported to the US,
Europe and other countries.

Aksh has also commissioned one fiber tower of 650,000 fkm while
another fiber tower of 650,000 fkm is in the process of being
installed. The fiber towers are expected to bring down fiber
making costs significantly. To add to the list, Aksh has also
installed equipment for Sleeving lathe and Preform Etching
process.

In addition to this, very recently Aksh has also ventured into
providing fiber optic based telecom solutions. As the
full-fledged plans for this venture are still to develop further,
Choudhary did not wish to dwell on it further.

Naik stated that Aksh had also signed an export contract for $
172 million for cables to US to be supplied over the next three
years. The foreign exchange earnings through exports amounted to
Rs 24.07 crore as against Rs 4.09 crore in the previous year
representing an increase of 488 percent over the last year.

(CNS)