As many as 10 private investors have expressed their interest to take over all the 11 operational mills of the Uttar Pradesh State Sugar Corporation Limited (UPSSCL), which have been put for sale by the state government.
Private players, who participated in the technical bid include Trevini Engineering, Indian Potash, Patel Engineering, Dwarikesh Sugar, Wave Industries, Lakshmipathy Balaji Sugar and Distilleries, DCM Shriram, PBS Food, Ticola Sugars and SBEC Bio Energy.
According to sources in the sugarcane department, financial bids for these mills will be opened after evaluating the technical bids.
The 11 mills for which bids have been received are Amroha, in JP Nagar, Bijnor, in Bijnor district, Bulandshahr, Chandpur, in Bijnor, Jarwal Road in Bahraich, Khadda, in Kushi Nagar, Mohiuddinpur in Meerut, Rohanakalan in Muzzafarnagar, Saharanpur, Sakhotitanda in Meerut and Siswabazar in Maharajganj.
Interestingly, most of these mills have large land banks to add to their attractiveness. While Amroha has almost 30.5 hectares of total land area, it?s cultivation area is spread over 55,000 hectares. The Bijnor mill has almost 16 hectares of land area and 17,500 hectares of cultivation land. The Bulandshahr mill has almost 33.5 hectares of land and 120000 hectares of cultivable land, the Chandpur mill, in Bijnor has 32hectares of land and 28,500 hectares of cultivable land and the Saharanpur mill has 61.5 hectares of land and about 36030 hectares of cultivation land, etc.
A big draw for these mills is the vast cane area that comes along with it. In fact, the bidders had demanded that the government promise not to change the cane area for the next five years after the sale is through, so as to ensure that their supply of cane for running the mill, if they decide to buy it, would remain intact.
Apart from these corporation mills, the Uttar Pradesh government had also invited expressions of interest from bidders for 24 mills of the UP Sugar Cooperative mills.
However, bids for only nine mills of the cooperative sector were received, while the remaining 15 mills saw a below average response.
As a result, the state government has been forced to extend the deadline for those 15 mills to July 28.
It may be mentioned that the sellout of these mills in the state sector had attracted a lot of interest at the pre-bid conference held in New Delhi recently, in which almost 60 bidders from all over the country showed up for the Sugar Cooperative pre-bid meeting, while 39 bidders came for the sugar corporation meet.
The state cabinet in 2007 decided to disinvest its equity in 33 sugars mills of the UPSSCL and a process to sell these units was started. However, it hit a road block as initially none of the private investors participated in the bidding process.
In June this year, the government launched a fresh exercise to sell 24 units of the UP Sugar Factories Federation and 11 units of UPSSCL.
