BASF India Ltd., part of BASF Group which manufactures products ranging from chemicals, plastics, performance products, crop protection products to oil and gas, is increasing its capacity both at Dahej and Panoli facilities.  

Speaking at Analysts/Fund Managers Meet of BASF India Ltd., Narendranath Baliga, Chief Financial Officer, BASF India Ltd. said, "Dahej plant capacity has been doubled from 45 kt, we have increased it by another 45 kt and as we speak now the commercial production is ongoing and hopefully they'll be able to cut the first commercial invoice any time now, so the capacity is increased and this is in Dahej 45 kt additional."

The Ultramid polyamide capacity in Panoli, this is a site we internally acquired from Solvay, that was the business which we acquired and there we are increasing the capacity by around 30% by the end of this year, the production will start by the end of this year, commented Baliga.  

Narayan Krishnamohan, Managing Director, BASF India Limited said, "At Panoli we are expanding the engineering plastics capacity, I mean we just acquired this a year or so ago we merged it into BIL and already we are talking about expanding the capacity by 30 percent so that's the first one I mean we will continue to see how the market goes and evaluating further the capacity needs."

Speaking about new entrants in the paint industry, Krishnamohan said, "Multiple players will only increase the competitive environment in that segment and if you look at the fact that we have just invested in a brand new asset capacity for dispersions, that essentially is with the view that the paint industry will grow and which is why we have expanded capacities and we will continuously review how that is happening and keep expanding either in Mangalore or in Dahej so we have dispersion capacities in both places depending upon where do we need it more whether it's in the north or south of the country so we have brilliant opportunities to do incremental expansions which obviously are a lot better than doing a greenfield project."