MUMBAI, INDIA: Sterlite Technologies, provider of power transmission conductors,  optical fibers and telecommunication cables has announced its plans to expand its Fiber Optic Cables facilities to an annual manufacturing capacity of 6 Million-km, from its current capacity of 2 Million-Km.

This expansion in conjunction with the Optical Fiber Expansion from 6 to 12 Million-kms that would position Sterlite amongst the Top 5 global integrated fiber and cable producers.

Project Highlights

The expansion milestones of these Fiber Optic Cables facilities has been planned to compliment the Company's ongoing capacity expansion at its Optical Fiber facilities.
The consolidated expansion for fiber and cable expansion is estimated to incur a Capital Expenditure of about Rs. 200 Crores (USD 50 Million).

These facilities would be capable of manufacturing the Company's existing range of Fiber Optic Cable Products as well as have the intrinsic capability to manufacture cable products as per evolving international telecom standards that are being introduced to cater to high bandwidth applications required by global markets.

The Optical Fiber expansion is on track to complete by June 2009 and the Cables expansion would be fully in place by March 2009. Sterlite is in advanced stages of discussion with leading global manufacturing equipment and raw material suppliers to streamline its efforts towards the expansion project milestones.

Status of other capacity enhancement projects

The new Power Transmission Conductors facility at Haridwar is fully operational and Sterlite has combined capacity of 115,000 MT.  The Company has undertaken several efficiency improvement projects and machine additions to further enhance the capacity by 40% to 160,000 MT within the current year, which will take Sterlite Technologies to a Top 3 position globally.

The Company is progressively converting its Copper Telecom Cables facilities to manufacture Structured Data Cables.  Sterlite Technologies has recently finished its expansion of Structured Data Cables to 300,000 boxes annually, which puts the Company within the Top 10 global producers of these cables. 

Says Dr Anand Agarwal, CEO & Director, "Over the past several business quarters we have achieved tremendous success in key high-demand markets in several geographies and have established a loyal customer base. With the strong outlook by the Telecom & Power sectors in India & the world, we believe that these capacity enhancements would give us the strategic advantage to capitalize on the available opportunities."