RIL mulls $9-bn investmen

Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to invest USD nine-billion in expansion of its polyester and petrochemicals business, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said today.

"In the next five-years, our total investment in all the new polyester and petrochemical manufacturing facilities will be the largest investment in this sector to be made anywhere in the world at any given point of time," RIL's Chairman, Mukesh Ambani, told shareholders at the company's AGM here.

RIL is executing a 1.4-million tonnes of paraxylene capacity at Jamnagar. It is also setting up an integrated 2.3-million tonnes of purified terephthalic acid (PTA), 5,40,000-tonnes of polyethylene terephthalate complex at Gandhar and 3,60,000-tonnes of polyester filament yarn plant at Silvassa.

These initiatives translate to the single largest capacity addition in polyester in the history of Reliance.

This expansion will strengthen India's position as a leading textile and fibre producer in the world, Ambani said.

With the next phase of large-scale investments, combined with value-added products, the polyester business would contribute in greater measure to Reliance's growth and profitability and maintain its global leadership, he said.

"In our recent past, the petrochemical business went into a consolidation phase. This was a sequel to the large capacity additions in Jamnagar and integration of manufacturing facilities of the erstwhile IPCL," he said.

"We are committed to creating competitive capacity in petrochemicals to cater to the next decade of growth in India and Asia," Ambani said.

The refinery provides Reliance with extremely competitive feedstock. Reliance will leverage its superior technical and project execution skills in building additional global scale capacities.

Ambani pointed out that currently, due to the on-going economic crisis, capacity-building in this sector globally is at a low. This provides Reliance with a unique opportunity to build world-scale capacity at competitive capital costs. All these augur well for rapid growth and profitability of the petrochemical business of Reliance, he said.

"We are accelerating the implementation of an off-gas cracker at Jamnagar. This off-gas cracker with over 1.5 million tonnes per annum of olefins capacity with matching downstream capacities will be one of the largest facilities in the world. MEG from cracker will add to our leadership position in the polyester business," he said.

Reliance is also the largest player in the synthetic rubber business in India.

"We want to build on this leadership to become one of the top ten elastomer companies in the world. Reliance will create additional capacities of poly butadiene rubber at Baroda and styrene butadiene rubber at Hazira...