Berger Paints has lined up a capital expenditure of nearly  Rs 400 crore to strengthen its paints business and double revenues over the next four-to-five years. The company will spend around Rs 250 crore to ramp up the decorative paints manufacturing capacity at Hindupur unit in Andhra Pradesh, and another  `100 crore on its industrial plant in Jejuri near Pune. These decisions were taken at the company’s 92nd AGM held in Kolkata.

Elaborating on the Hindupur plan, managing director and CEO Abhijit Roy said, “We intend to build new infrastructure and install machines within the existing premises. The proposed expansion will help Hindupur to double its manufacturing capacity to 1,44,000 metric tonne (MT) per annum.” Speaking on the Jejuri plant, Roy said that the expansion of the Jejuri plant, to be undertaken in FY 2017-18, will increase production further. “As of now the company is in the process of increasing capacity of the Jejuri unit to 22,000 MT from 12,000 MT per annum by end-March 2017.”

Roy further said the company has decided to set up manufacturing bases in north eastern India anticipating huge potential and steady growth of these markets in forthcoming years. “We have acquired land for setting up an integrated paint plant at Naltoli near Tezpur,” he said, adding that the plant will commence production by January 2017. The factory will produce an entire range of products including water-based, solvent-based and dry products such as putty and distemper.

The initial annual capacity of the plant is proposed to be 24,000 kilolitre per annum of water based paints and 13,200 kilolitre per annum of solvent based paints, together with the corresponding resin manufacturing unit. In addition, the company is also setting up a distemper and putty manufacturing facility at Nalbari near Guwahati with an annual capacity of 1,200 tonne and 6,000 tonne, respectively.