Blue Star to expand at Dadra, Sri City facilities

CHENNAI: Home appliances company Blue Star Ltd engaged in air conditioning, commercial refrigeration would undertake capacity expansion plans at its facilities in Dadra and Sri City, a top official said here on Tuesday. The company in January commenced production at its unit in Sri City, Tada in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh set up at an investment of Rs 350 crore.

“We have seven manufacturing facilities. We will be setting up one more facility in Sri City (Andhra Pradesh)...,” Blue Star Ltd managing director B Thiagarajan said. Blue Star Ltd has manufacturing plants in Himachal Pradesh, Ahmedabad, Dadra, Wada (Maharashtra) and Sri City. The company which reported revenue of Rs 6,045 crore last year expects to register about Rs 8,200 crore this year.

Thiagarajan, commenting about ramping up of production at its facilities, said these two projects in Dadra and Sri City would be the new initiatives undertaken by Blue Star. “We will be investing about Rs 200 crore for taking up expansion at Sri City Phase II...,” he said. To a query, he said the company already invested Rs 180 crore at the facility in Dadra.

Thiagarajan said the company would also look at shipment of its products to Middle East market from the Sri City production unit. Besides expansion at the manufacturing units, the company would also ramp up its existing touch points to 10,000 from the current 8,000, he said.

Thiagarajan and Blue Star vice-president (commercial refrigeration business) Srinivas Reddy were here to unveil a range of deep freezers with more storage and higher cooling capacity that are priced between Rs 25,000 to Rs 35,000. The deep freezers are manufactured at the company’s manufacturing unit in Wada. We are working on further investments to product deep freezers that range between 50L and 200L,” Reddy said.