Bhajanka in Calcutta on Thursday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, Jan. 24: The promoters of Century Plyboards will dilute their stake in the company by 15-17 per cent to meet listing requirements.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) have asked the company to complete the dilution by April 30.

At present, the promoters hold about 90 per cent in the Calcutta-based company, which has diversified into cement, ferro alloy and logistics.

Century Ply is now planning to merge two small units, which will push up the promoters’ holding by about 1.5 per cent.

The promoters want to dilute their stake by issuing fresh shares and, according to managing director Sajjan Bhajanka, talks are on with domestic and foreign institutional investors.

If talks with institutions do not fructify, Century Ply promoters will sell their existing stake to meet the listing requirement.

The money raised through the stake dilution will help in funding the company’s expansion plans.

Century has undertaken a Rs 2,050-crore expansion programme — to be completed by 2010 — in cement, plyboard and ferro alloy. It will require Rs 600 crore as equity to finance the projects. Part of it — about Rs 200 crore — will come from stake dilution.

The promoters were to dilute equity by December 2007, following earlier directives by the BSE and the NSE after Century had merged a company called Shyam Century with itself in 2006. This could not be done as Century went on to merge two more companies with itself.