Company managing director RM Pandia told The Financial Express: "The pre-project work has been completed. The investment of the project is about Rs 700 crore and we are planning to tie up the funding at an affordable rate. At present, we are waiting for the market to get stabilised."

"Today the capital market or the debt market is not in a position to give us funding and so we have to wait till the situation stabilises so that we can have a long term picture of the chemical industry. For this reason, most of the companies in the chemical industry are holding back their investments as well as projects. The current parameters do not make the Indian chemical industry very competitive as compared to international scenario," Mr Pandia added.

The present capacity of acetone and phenol in the existing plant is around 34,000 metric tonnes per year and 20,400 metric tonnes per year, respectively. The company is in the process of enhancing its capacity of alkyl phenols by an additional 1,000 metric tonnes per year. The increased capacity would enable HCL to improve the market share in this segment.

Mr Pandia said that the company is putting more stress on the existing capacities, to enhance and debottleneck the capacities and improve efficiencies. "The project for augmenting the capacity of phenol and acetone is on and the target is around 50 per cent," he added.

The company is also in talks with foreign multinationals for sourcing contracts. The process is on and currently at the evaluation stage. "We have expertise in certain areas like alkalination, hydrogenation, dehydrogenation and oxidation. We are trying to add value to our own products and make specialty products as raw materials for MNCs," said Mr Pandia. Herdillia has entered into a collaboration with a French research organisation to develop an eco-friendly catalyst for specialty chemicals as an intermediary in the chemical industry. Mr Pandia has evinced that within a month, all the preparatory work should be completed.

The company has completed first three years of ISO-14000, the ISO-90000 certification for more than five years and presently working on six sigma, which would bring the company significant benefit.