Tata Chemicals will commission a pilot plant to make nutraceuticals in Chennai next month. The entry into the nutraceuticals business is part of its plan to increasingly focus on specialty and consumer products businesses.
Tata Chemicals had invested around Rs.50 crore to set up the pilot plant, which would initially have a capacity of 300 tonnes annually, and would scale up to 1,000 tonnes, company CFO P. K. Ghose told this correspondent.
Speaking on the sidelines of an event here to launch the commemorative book, Salt of the earth: the story of Tata Chemicals, which chronicles the company’s 75 years of existence, Mr. Ghose said the products to be made at the Chennai unit were oligosaccharides and polyols, the inputs used in the food industry.
The book, written by Philip Chacko and Christabelle Noronha, chronicles the company and the people who shaped it over 75 years of its existence.
“Today marks a historical milestone in the story of Tata Chemicals,” Tata Chemicals Managing Director R. Mukundan said. “The company has evolved from a commodities enterprise that dealt mainly in inorganic chemicals to providing solutions to end-customers. Tata Chemicals is today the second largest soda ash producer in the world and the largest salt manufacturer. We are completely committed to Indian agriculture with a ‘Farm to Fork’ approach.”
The company’s investments in nanotechnology with Swach water purifier and biotechnology with nutraceuticals to make probiotics and products promoting gut health were now bearing fruit, he said.
