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Orient Paper & Industries Ltd (OPIL), incorporated in 1936, makes W&P paper, craft paper and boards, besides cement and electric fans. With an annual turnover of Rs. 201 crore and a total of 2,946 employees, its annual production of paper is to the tune of 72,740 million tonnes. The company diversified into cement in 1982. In 1995, Orient General Industries Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary, was merged with the company. After this merger, Orient entered the electric fans business. It has also diversified into pollution control equipments, which contribute to a very small part of the turnover. It has also set up a 300-tpd paper unit in Kenya in collaboration with the Kenyan government by way of royalties and management fees. Orient Paper is one of the largest producers of paper in India, with a market share of over 10 per cent. It has two paper plants at Amlai and Brajrangpur with capacities of 85,000 tpa and 76,000 tpa, respectively. While the Amlai unit primarily produces W&P paper, the Brajrangnagar plant produces craft and duplex boards for industrial packaging. An effluent treatment plant and a high rate transpiration system (HRTS) help minimise water pollution caused by the production processes. OPIL Amlai was the first industrial paper mill in India to adopt the HRTS. Although the mills effluent treatment plant (the operating cost of which works out to Rs 2 crore per annum) ensured that its waste water met all the statutory parameters for discharge in surface water as specified by the ministry of forests and environment, OPIL tried to find alternative uses for the fully treated (coloured) industrial waste water, which contained a non-degradable chemical compound.
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