Usher Agro, an agro-processing company which markets rice, wheat, wheat products, food stuffs and food grains under the brand Rasoi Raaja propose to raise funds upto Rs 100 crore through issue of various equity instruments so as to fund the company's future expansion plans including the 300000 ton roller wheat flour mill at Chatta in Uttar Pradesh. The company already operates two Rice Mill Plants in Mathura (U.P.) and in Buxar (Bihar) besides a Roller Flour Mill at Mathura.

Announcing this at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company, V. K. Chaturvedi, the managing director of the company said that the company proposed to raise funds by way of a qualified institutional placement (QIP) of equity shares of Rs 75 each including those issued pursuant to conversion of convertible securities or compulsory fully convertible debentures (CFCD) under the provisions of chapter XIII-A of the SEBI (disclosure and investor protection) guidelines, 2000.

Chaturvedi said, "The company is expanding its rice milling and wheat flour capacities significantly over the next few years. The aim is to be among the top players in the basic foods segment with a milling capacity of over a million tonnes per annum". He added, "The Company is also looking to gainfully utilize the by-products such as rice-husk and rice bran by setting up biomass power plant and rice bran oil extractions units to be used for production of edible oils."

In the rice segment, the milling capacity will increase by 200,000 lakh tones annually with an estimated outlay of Rs 45 crore by the fiscal year 2008-09. At the same time, the wheat flour milling capacity will also go up by 300,000 tones per annum. All these will lead to a turnover of over Rs 600 crore.

Chaturvedi strongly believed that the basic food segment offers tremendous latent potential and so does the entire food processing industry as the Union Government expected investments to the tune of Rs 100000 crore in this sector during the 11th five year plan (2007-2012). In fact, most of these investments would derived from the retail trade sector who preferred to have long term reliable and quality suppliers of all kind of items including clothing, basic food and beverages.

Usher Agro has positioned itself to avail the huge opportunities in the retail food segment and engaged itself in creating large scale capacity to meet the future demand. As a part of overall business strategy, the company aims to position itself among the top three players in the rice milling segment and the largest wheat flour milling in India in the next three years.

Powered byCapital Market - Live News