Bajaj Hindusthan has announced a new greenfield sugar project of 5,000 tccpd in Uttar Pradesh. This unit will take the company's overall sugar capacity target to 1,00,000 tccpd from 95,000 tccpd.

The proposed sugar unit, with capacity expandable to 7,000 tccpd, will be supported by a 10 MW co-generation plant, together costing Rs.200 crore.

The company has also planned to invest Rs.240 crore in setting up co-generation plants with aggregate capacity 74 MW (excluding 45 MW of capacity under construction). This will take the company's total power capacity to 270 MW, out of which 90 MW of power will be sold to third parties.

BHL is already in the midst of expanding its distillery capacity from 320 klpd to 800 klpd.

The overall expansion plan (sugar, cogeneration and distillery) would cost Rs.700 crore, which would be part-financed through a proposed GDR issue that was approved by the company's board on 20 January 2006.

In December 2005, BHL commissioned three sugar units in Uttar Pradesh, each of 7,000 tccpd, at Bilai (Bijnor district), Thanabhawan and Bhaisana (both in Muzaffarnagar district). This took BHL's total sugar capacity to 53,000 tccpd.

In Phase II of the project, BHL would undertake brownfield expansion at its existing units, together adding 15,000 tccpd of fresh capacity. The phase would also include setting up of three greenfield units, each with capacity 9,000 tccpd, at Saharanpur, Pilibhit & Lakhimpur (all in Uttar Pradesh.). Phase II will take BHL's total capacity to 95,000 tccpd. With the latest 5,000 tccpd sugar unit announced, total sugar capacity would cross 1 lakh tcpd.