Kothari Industrial Corporation plans expansion entailing $1 billion investment

CHENNAI: Kothari Industrial Corporation (KICL) is expanding in its fertilizer and footwear facilities and setting up an industrial park, which entails a cumulative investment of about $1 billion over the next three years. Of this, two footwear manufacturing units alone will have an investment of Rs 5,000 crore, said J Rafiq Ahmed who took over as its executive chairman on Wednesday. All the facilities are coming up in Tamil Nadu.

"We are reviving a footwear manufacturing unit in Karur to produce an international footwear brand, while the second facility will parallelly come up in our non-leather footwear industrial park at Perambalur," he told reporters here.

Phoenix Kothari Footwear, a joint venture between (KICL) and Evervan group of Taiwan, is likely to sign an MoU on Feb 26 with the Tamil Nadu government for the purpose, he added.

Phoenix Kothari has been operating a factory in Perambalur since 2023. "About 100 million pairs of footwear would be rolled out of factories by the end of Dec 2027. The non-leather footwear industrial park will house component manufacturers. More than 50,000 people will get employment in our facilities by 2027," he added.

Focusing on its core business of fertilizers, the company is setting up a factory to produce NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) with a capacity of 12 million tonnes per annum. The manufacturing unit was previously planned in Qatar.

"An investment of Rs 1,300 crore would be made for the factory. We will be sourcing funds through various banks in Singapore including DBS Bank," Ahmed added. Arrangements are being made to import raw materials including gas, ammonia and rock phosphate.

The company is also setting up an industrial park that can house manufacturing units for multiple products such as leather, footwear and automobile accessories in south Tamil Nadu at an investment of Rs 1,500 crore.

Meanwhile, the KICL board gave its nod to re-designate Ahmed as the executive chairman and managing director following the resignation of Pradip Dayanand Kothari, who stepped down from the position of chairman and director of the company on Tuesday.

A member of Qatar's ruling family Falah Jassim J M AL-Thani, who is also a promoter-director of Doha Bank and a founder of Qatar Airways, is being inducted as a new director in the board, Ahmed further said. A former minister of the Qatar govt, Falah Jassim J M AL-Thani holds 10% stake with KICL.


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