KEF Infrastructure India, a ₹1,000-crore company making prefabricated components and fittings for buildings, is expanding across multiple locations with factories planned in major cities.

It is also promoting a separate company to supply prefabricated high-end homes.

KEF Infra, wholly-owned by KEF Holdings headquartered in the UAE, has invested over ₹650 crore ($100 million) in KEF Infra One Industrial Park, a 42-acre offsite manufacturing facility to produce precast concrete structures, modular rooms, bathroom pods, wood joinery and glazing and stone processing solutions. Entire hospitals, homes, schools and commercial buildings can be manufactured here and assembled onsite.

Precast concreted facility

Addressing mediapersons on a tour of the company's facility, Faizal E Kottikollon, Chairman, KEF Holdings, said the company will invest about ₹650 crore each in three more offsite manufacturing sites in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad, and ₹100 crore in a precast concrete facility in Lucknow.

Hyderabad, initially, with a precast concrete components facility, and Lucknow factories will go on stream this year.

A large part of the funding for the expansion is internally generated. KEF Holdings is a $650-million diversified business in infrastructure, healthcare and other strategic investments.

In addition, it plans to divest about 30 per cent to a private equity player and in a couple of years go public.

Capacity expansion

The facility here has an annual production capacity of 6 million sq ft of constructed space and a ₹130-crore expansion that is ongoing will add about 1 million sq ft of capacity across precast, aluminium components and joinery.

Two million sq ft each in Hyderabad and Lucknow will take the total capacity of KEF Infrastructure to about 11 million sq ft by the year-end, he said.

Effectively, KEF Infra is an end-to-end solutions provider that sets up entire buildings for its clients. After being launched in December 2016, it has reached an annual revenue of ₹1,000 crore in 2017 and has an order backlog of ₹1,316 crore, equivalent of 4 million sq ft of constructed space in 2017-18. The order book spans, hospitals, hotels, IT buildings and schools.

Among its clients are leading businesses, he said. It has constructed a 1.7-million-sq-ft commercial building for Embassy Group, a 500,000 sq ft building for Infosys in Bengaluru.

The country's first prefabricated mall of 2 million sq ft is coming up in Lucknow, Kottikollon said. Prefabrication technology enables "better buildings faster". A two million sq ft structure that will take five years to build can be completed in 21 months, he said.

(The correspondent is in Krishnagiri at the invitation of the company.)

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