India's Hindalco plans $4.3 bln investment
MUMBAI, Sept 20 (Reuters) - India's top aluminium maker, Hindalco Industries Ltd (HALC.BO), will invest 198 billion rupees ($4.3 billion) over three years to expand capacity in India, its chairman told a shareholders' meeting late on Friday.
Of this, about 60 billion rupees is being invested in the current financial year ending March 2009, he said.
Hindalco has been looking to set up manufacturing facilities in eastern India at Orissa and Jharkhand, and in central India at Madhya Pradesh. It has also outlined capacity expansion plans at existing plants in Jharkhand and Orissa.
The investments will be partly financed through money raised from a previous rights issue and debt, Sunirmal Talukdar, chief financial officer at Hindalco told Reuters.
"There is no dearth of funds for the projects. After our new rights issue, the balance sheet strength will also allow us to take fresh loans."
"There will be no need to raise more equity," he added.
Hindalco launches its planned $1.1 billion rights share offering on Monday, to repay a bridge loan taken for its 2007 acquisition of Canada's Novelis. The sale of three shares for every seven held at 96 rupees a share, closes on Oct. 10.
On Friday, Hindalco's shares edged up 0.4 percent to 112.85 rupees in a Mumbai market .BSESN up 5.5 percent. ($1=45.8 rupees) (Reporting by Prashant Mehra; Editing by Anshuman Daga)
