It is not often that one comes across a company whose turnover is expected to jump from ₹100 crore in one year to ₹4,000 crore in the next, but Gruner Renewable Energy says it will achieve the feat, thanks partly to an order for 11 compressed biogas (CBG) plants from Reliance Industries.
Gruner, which builds CBG plants for other companies and undertakes to maintain them, is all set to deliver the first CBG plant to Reliance. The ₹220-crore plant at Navsari (near Surat) that can produce 44 tonnes of biogas per day (16,000 tonnes a year) from biomass feedstock such as paddy straw, pressmud, cane trash and municipal solid waste, is said to be Asia’s biggest.
Gruner’s founder and CEO, Utkarsh Gupta, told the businessline today that the company had orders worth ₹1,500 crore and expected to have many more in the coming months. Gruner bagged 11 of the first fifty plants that Reliance tendered for but expected to get more in the second batch of 50.
Reliance will blend the CBG with the compressed natural gas it supplies automobiles through its outlets.
JV with a PSU
In addition, Gruner is close to consummating a deal with “a large public sector company” to set up a joint venture that would manufacture CBG plants for the PSU. Gruner would own a 51 per cent stake in the JV, Gupta said.
Gruner was started in February 2023 and is headquartered in Noida. It manufactures CBG plants using technology from BioEnergy of Germany, a leader in the field. Gupta said that the company, through a special-purpose vehicle, would get into the manufacture of biogas purification machinery. It is also considering manufacturing biomass briquetting and pelleting plants, for which there is a growing demand.