Saint-Gobain Glass India Pvt. Ltd. has inaugurated its Rs 15-crore sand beneficiation plant at Tada, north of Chennai. The plant will provide the basic raw material for the company“s float glass plan…
Saint-Gobain Glass India Pvt. Ltd. has inaugurated its Rs 15-crore sand beneficiation plant at Tada, north of Chennai. The plant will provide the basic raw material for the company“s float glass plant that is now under construction at Irungattukkottai near Chennai. Saint-Gobain Glass India“s managing director, Mr. B. Santhanam, said that all the civil works as well as the equipment for the float glass plant were at the site, ready to be commissioned. Commissioning of a glass plant is a technical and long-drawn process that could take about 25-30 days. The key element of the commissioning is the ignition of the furnace, which calls for a “heat-up team“ of about 50 people, most of them experts from abroad. The exact date of the commissioning of the plant (650 tonnes per day) would depend upon when the heat-up team comes together at Chennai, Mr. Santhanam said. The company expects to commission the plant in the April-June quarter. Saint-Gobain Glass India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French multinational Saint-Gobain. The US$ 125-million Chennai project suffered some delays when its site had to be shifted because the company was not happy with the site it had been originally allotted by the Tamil Nadu Government. Also, the Korean car manufacturer Hyundai had some technical objections to Saint-Gobain“s location next to its car plant. The company, which lost about six months in this relocation, is happy with the present site which is “technically and logistically a substantially better site”.