"We plan to expand the manufacturing capacity of tiles from 55,000 toness to 85,000 tonnes annually in the next two years at an estimated cost of Rs 35 crore," OCIL executive director Madhur Daga said.

OCIL currently manufacturers floor and wall tiles in 300 designs and in nine sizes. "Demand in the housing sector has started picking up and we are hopeful that in the next six months ceramic industry will also show an upward trend," Daga said.

OCIL is a dominat player in the north and would continue to concentrate in this area, he said, adding that in order to further increase its position in the region the company is investing in information technology (IT) to have on-line link with its distributors.

"In next couple of years, we plan to invest 5 per cent of our turnover in ITand related areas in order to meet global standards and practices," Daga said.

For the financial year ending March 1999, OCIL reported sales of Rs 63 crore and net profit of Rs 1.5 crore.

Daga said, apart from the expansion at its Sikandrabad (UP) plant, the company is also looking for acquisitions of smaller units to consolidate its position in the ceramics industry.

However he said acquisitions would depend on the situations and the overall trend in the ceramics industry.

He said in the last three months OCIL has been operating at 100 per cent capacity and looking at the current situation demand could improve further in the second half of current fiscal.

On the future growth of the ceramics industry, he said the growth is expected to come from the mini-metros, where the awareness for ceramic tiles has to be created.

OCIL is making efforts to create awareness through its 275 distributors and 1,000 sub-distributors, he said.

Apart from it, ceramic tiles manufactures have formed an associationand would shortly come out with a paper on ceramic tiles to generate awareness among people on advantages of tiles, Daga added.