Goa Carbon, a group company of Rs 1,800-crore Dempo Group, has planned an infusion of Rs 700 crore to establish a Calcium Petroleum Coke (CPC) manufacturing plant, augment capacity by 1 lakh tonnes to 2.25 lakh tonnes (lt) at its Paradip unit in Orissa and venture into co-power generation of 18 MW at its three units in Bilaspur, Paradip and Goa. Currently, the company has a total CPC capacity of 2.40 lakh tonnes at three plants. The new CPC plant will have a capacity of 3.5 lt to 5 lt with a 50 MW power plant and will set up in the East Coast, mostly in Orissa, with an investment Rs 500 crore. The investment for cogen plants in three units will cost Rs 200 crore.
The demand for CPC is on the rise from robust aluminium manufacturing companies which consumes about 70 per cent of the total production. Tracking the crude oil, prices of raw petroleum coke, the main raw material for CPC, have gone up from $300 a tonne to $410 a tonne last year exerting pressure on the margins. Dempo Group is in negotiations with private equity investor to divest 30-40 per cent stake in its mining venture V.S. Dempo & Co.
