Kolkata: City-based tyre manufacturer Dunlop India is planning a 10 MW captive power plant at its manufacturing unit at Shahgunj in West Bengal, a top company official said here Tuesday.

"We are planning to set up a 10 MW power plant at the Shahgunj factory site on an approximate investment of Rs.500 million within the next one to one-and-a-half years," said Dunlop chairman Pawan Kumar Ruia during the company's annual general meeting.

Ruia ventured into the tyre manufacturing in 2005 with the acquisition of Dunlop India Ltd and Falcon Tyres .

In 2007, the Ruia Group acquired Mumbai company Monotona Tyres.

The group has just started a six MW captive power plant at the Falcon Tyres manufacturing site. As the current captive need is 3.5 MW, the company plans to sell the excess power, Ruia said.

The Shahgunj unit's captive need is five MW.

About the Rs.4 billion greenfield tyre plant in Assam, Ruia said: "The detailed project report of the plant is complete. It will be an off-the-road (OTR) plant with 50 tonne per day capacity."

The plant work would be completed in the next one-two years, he said.

Maintaining that the high rubber cost is hurting Dunlop's profitability, Ruia said input cost has shot up by 30 percent between the last quarter of the last fiscal and the first quarter of the current fiscal.

Dunlop is also looking at a technological tie up with a UK-based company for re-starting its aero tyre manufacturing division, which has been closed for almost a decade.

Dunlop, which was under the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), came out of the sick status last fiscal and made a marginal profit of Rs.48.5 million.

"This fiscal we are targeting turnover of Rs.5 billion. Last year, it was Rs.1.2 billion," Ruia added.

He also claimed that market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India has directed depository service providers not to dematerialise Dunlop shares.

Dunlop shares were barred from trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange in 2002 when the then owner of the company, Manu Chabbria, failed to pay the listing fees. The ban is still in place.