The Somani-owned Excel Glasses Ltd, celebrating its silver jubilee this year, has a turnover of Rs 50 crore.

The company will invest an additional Rs 3 crore to bag the contract from the soft drink giants. Excel Glasses personnel and administration manager M Thomas Kadavan said the company has decided to go in for soft drink bottling, following stiff competition in other sectors of bottle manufacturing.

According to Kadavan, the bottle industry in the state was facing tough competition from glass makers from the neighbouring states. He said only 20 per cent of the bottles produced by the company were sold in Kerala.

The rest would have to be sold outside the state, incurring heavy transportation cost, he added. "For the last six years we are not in a position to raise the prices of our finished products more than 6 per cent despite the input costs going up several fold," he said.

The situation worsened with the setting up of a dedicated second-hand bottle manufacturing unit in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Consequently, the company is finding it difficult to get even broken bottles and glass materials for recycling.

The major advantage of glass industry in Kerala -- silica sand and cheap power -- have ceased to be as lucrative as they used to be. The power costs had gone up substantially in the state along with the cost of silica sands.

Excel with a turnover of Rs 50 crore is also planning an investment of Rs 1 crore for a new filtering process of silica sands. This will enable it utilise nearly 90 per cent of the raw material.

The company with a capacity of 160 tonnes per day also bagged ISO-9002 certification from NVA Netherlands. This is the first glass manufacturer in South India to receive ISO certificate.