Adani Enterprises (AEL) will review its plans to build a coal-to-polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant in Mundra, Gujarat. The embattled group will also not make any significant bids for road projects. Further, it will also moderate certain accelerations budgeted in its earlier capex plans but will continue with the investment plans for its core infrastructure businesses.
“In relation to the coal to PVC, that is one of our new commitments, and we will review that commitment post-settlement of this volatility period. For the time being, we will not be making any commitments to new projects,” Jugeshinder Singh, Group CFO at Adani Group, said in an earlier post-earnings call.“Committed projects are continuing as per schedule,” he said, adding the company will not make any new commitments until the volatility is settled.
The company had planned to build a 2-million-tonne-per-annum coal-to-PVC plant in Mundra, Gujarat, with an investment of $4 billion. The project was expected to produce PVC grades such as suspension PVC (resin), chlorinated PVC (C-PVC) and emulsion PVC (paste), AEL had said in its submission to the ministry of environment, forests & Climate Change in 2021.
Feedstock coal of about 3.1 million tonne per year for the project will be sourced mainly from Australia, Russia and other countries, it had said, adding it expected the project to be on stream within four years of receiving all the necessary approvals.
Further, AEL will not be aggressively bidding for road projects in the fourth quarter, when a number of HAM and EPC projects are expected to be awarded.“For the new commitments on capex, we will first want this volatility period to settle before we actually make new commitments. So, I don’t expect any significant bidding in the road projects,” Singh said, adding, however, its plans for setting up copper plants and data centres, among others, are on track.AEL will also moderate certain accelerations budgeted in its earlier capex plans but will continue with the investment plans for its core infrastructure businesses.“With the recent developments there are a couple of measures we will take just to respond to the market volatility.
So, our investments in the core infrastructure sector, which include that in energy and utilities such as green hydrogen, transport and logistics portfolio will continue as planned. However, given the current volatility, we will moderate certain accelerations that we have budgeted in the capex profile and we will now continue on the ordinary course of business-based capex,” Singh said.