Staff Reporter
At a cost of Rs. 4.30 crore at Kagithapuram
It will help reduce wastage
Handling time reduced
KARUR: As part of a modernisation drive, the Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited has installed an automatic storage and retrieval system at Kagithapuram near here at an estimated cost of Rs. 4.30 crore.
The TNPL Managing Director V. Moorthy declared open the system on Friday.
The vertical storage system has two lanes and the cost of civil construction alone was to the tune of Rs.1 crore. In the 20 pigeon holes established at present, around 60 tonnes of paper could be stored and retrieved in an hour, Mr. Moorthy said.
There was enough space to double the handling capacity at the automatic storage and retrieval system, he added.
Stating that the scientific way of storing and retrieving the fine paper material would help reduce wastage and damage, Mr. Moorthy observed that an operator could organise the activities at the facility sitting in a control room with minimal human resource. Also, the handling time has been reduced to just one minute for shifting a tonne of paper on the two lanes.
Production to go up
At present the TNPL was manufacturing 42,000 tonnes of copier a year at the rate of 3500 tonnes a month.
After the mill development plant was implemented, the copier production capacity would go up to 54,000 tonnes a year.
However, by the end of 2009, it had been planned to increase copier production to 7500 tonnes a month.
He said that the ongoing Rs. 565- crore mill development plan would be completed shortly, pushing up the TNPL’s production level significantly, besides helping make huge strike on the environmental improvement side.
The implementation of advance production, consumption and procurement plan coupled with strategic market tie-up had helped the TNPL maintain a minimum inventory.
Mr. Moorthy said that the TNPL’s revenue from cogeneration wind farms at Devarkulam and Perungudi was to the tune of Rs.14 crore during the last fiscal and that with the installed capacity going up by 6.5 MW over that of last year, the TNPL was expecting a revenue of Rs.17 crore during the current year.
The total installed capacity now stood at 35.5 MW at an investment Rs.128 crore. During the current year around 5.5-crore KWh of power would be generated at the wind farms, Mr. Moorthy said.
