Aditya Birla Group to invests $60m to expand its rayon plant in West Java

Aditya Birla Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate a dominant player in viscose staple fibre who besides Indo Bharat Rayon has four other companies in Indonesia, namely PT Elegant Textile Industry, PT Indo Liberty Textiles, PT Sunrise Bumi Textiles and PT Indo Raya Kimia. The Aditya Birla group has invested $60 million in Indonesia to expand its rayon plant in Purwakarta, West Java.

PT Indo Bharat Rayon, the conglomerate’s local unit, inaugurated its rayon fiber production line, their seventh in the Purwakarta plant on Monday, 12th October with an investment of US $ 60 million, and making a production capacity of 210,000 tons per year,

President Director of PT Indo Bharat Rayon Mukul Agrawal said that the expansion of the plant is made on the size of the prospect of their group, Aditya Birla, to flourish in Indonesia.

Seventh line has a production capacity of 180 tons per day, so that the total production of viscose rayon staple fiber could reach 578 tons per day,” he said at the inauguration of the seventh line PT Indo Bharat Rayon.

Chief Operating Officer of PT Indo Bharat Rayon Bir Kapoor said that as a multinational group engaged in the textile sector in an integrated way, Indonesia is one country with the potential to expand.

The investment climate in Indonesia is good. Backed by a balance of infrastructure for the industry, the availability of trained human resources, political climate is also stable to support the business. Besides product quality is also good, he said.

Indo Bharat has a daily production capacity of 578 tons of rayon — a semi-synthetic fiber made from wood pulp as an alternative to silk — and boasts 6,460 employees.

Minister of Industry Saleh Husin attended the inauguration ceremony and said that investment from foreign investors like Aditya Birla has contributed to over half of the Rp 3.95 trillion ($290 million) direct investment in the textile industry in the first six months of the year.

Investment in textiles reinforces their confidence that the industry continues to grow. Optimism of the industry is in line with the government’s efforts to maintain a conducive business climate.

The addition of these investments will answer the difficulty of downstream industries of textiles and textile products (TPT) in obtaining raw materials rayon.

They are produced from pulp to be a rayon fiber which is spinning industrial raw materials, industrial yarns. Later downstream will be to the garment and textile industry.

The initiative to invest upstream TPT highly anticipated to be able to substitute imports. According to him, another textile industry players need to perform similar actions, to seek production needs from upstream to downstream.