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Bharti Dura-line plans unit in North for telecom ducts

Our Bureau

CHENNAI, July 3

BHARTI Dura-Line Ltd, the 50:50 joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Dura-Line Corporation of the US, is contemplating setting up a factory in North India to manufacture permanently solid lubricated silicore HDPE telecom ducts.

At present, the company has a unit in Goa that manufactures these ducts. The unit's capacity is being increased from the current level of 10,000 km of ducts a year to about 25,000 km.

In view of the anticipated growth in demand for these ducts, Bharti Dura-Line may consider putting up a plant in North India. ``We might put up a facility in North India in a year to take advantage of the large market,'' its Director (Operations), Mr. Vi jay Kiyawat, told Business Line here.

The plant, expected to start with a capacity of around 10,000 km a year, will need an investment of Rs. 15 crores, according to him.

Bharti Dura-Line ended last year with a turnover of Rs. 26 crores and expects to touch Rs. 50 crores this year. However, Mr. Kiyawat declined to reveal the profit as ``ours is a closely-held company''. The equity base of the company is Rs. 7 crores.

He said that nearly 40 per cent of the production was exported. The main markets were the Netherlands, the UAE, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Bharti Dura-Line had bagged a $15-million order in the UAE, which was to be completed in two years.

Mr. Kiyawat and Mr. Paresh Chari, President, Dura-Line International, said the ducts were unique in that they had an inner silicore lining. This ensured that the cables were not damaged when they were being inserted into the ducts. Silicore was a solid p ermanently coextruded polymer inner lining having low co-efficient of friction that made cable blowing faster and easier. Dura-Line Corporation, based in Knoxville, Tennessee, had patents on silicore, Mr. Chari said.

Dura-Line Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emerson Electric and has global sales of over $300 millions, according to Mr. Chari.

Dura-Line Corporation had a tie up with a company called Plumettaz of Switzerland, which specialised in pneumatic blowing of cables into ducts. With the help of the pneumatic machines, the cables could be blown into the ducts. The advantage of this was t hat cables could be blown inside the ducts for longer distances than was possible manually. Also there would be fewer splices on the ducts when compared to doing it manually, Mr. Chari said.

Bharti Dura-Line was the sole selling and leasing agent for Plumettaz's equipment in India, Mr. Kiyawat said and added that blowing of heavy armoured optic fibre cable using these machines had been done for Indian Oil Corporation's Meerut-Saharanpur pipe line project and Indian Railways.