Dollex Agrotech is a small sugar mill in Madhya Pradesh that is trying to turn itself into an ethanol company. It was built from scratch by a promoter with three decades in the distilling business, after he walked away from a previous listed sugar entity. The recurring idea is simple: use the cash and by-products of sugar to fund a move into government-backed renewable fuel, insulating the business from the wild swings of the commodity cycle.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a modest sugar manufacturing and trading operation, a captive power unit that feeds off its own waste, and an ethanol plant still waiting for a licence to start - each designed to make the next one possible.
1. Sugar manufacturing and trading: the commodity core that feeds everything else
The company makes and resells sugar, but the real value lies in the molasses and bagasse it generates - those by-products are the raw material for its energy ambitions.
- Makes its own sugar, buys and resells others' - the manufacturing segment crushes sugarcane to produce white sugar, Khandsari (a traditional, less-refined sugar), molasses, and bagasse, while the trading segment simply purchases sugar as stock-in-trade for resale, giving it two ways to serve customers.
- Tied to the crop cycle - the crushing season runs only about six months a year, which means the company needs a lot of working capital to buy cane during that window, and any shortage of sugarcane directly hurts both sugar and power production.
- No long-term customer lock-in - it sells into the domestic Indian market on an order-by-order basis with no long-term contracts, and a big chunk of revenue comes from a small number of key customers who can walk away at any time.
- Operates on a government quota - the central government tells each mill how much sugar it can sell each month based on expected demand, so the company does not have full control over its own sales volumes.
- Small and local - the plant sits within a 30-kilometre radius of cane-growing areas in Madhya Pradesh, and the company works to keep farmers close by promoting early-maturing cane varieties and providing subsidised insecticides.
2. Captive power: burning its own waste to cut costs
The mill burns bagasse, the dry fibrous waste left after crushing cane, to generate its own electricity - turning a disposal problem into a cost advantage.
- Fuel is free, supply is not - because the power plant runs almost entirely on bagasse and bio-waste from sugar manufacturing, any constraint on sugarcane availability immediately threatens power production.
- Squeezes more energy from less fuel - the company has put in place a series of energy-saving tweaks, including recovering waste heat from hot water condensate, improving boiler efficiency to save bagasse, and installing cooling towers and steam traps.
- No imported technology - all the energy-efficiency improvements over the last three years have been home-grown adjustments to existing equipment, with no foreign technology brought in.
3. Ethanol and distillery: the unfinished green-energy bet
A 60-kilolitre-per-day ethanol plant is built and waiting for two government approvals to start commercial production - it is the entire reason the company raised fresh money and the promoter converted his loans into equity.
- Designed to run all year - the plant uses multi-feed technology, meaning it can switch between different raw materials instead of being tied to the sugar season, and it is built with the flexibility to double capacity to 120 kilolitres per day later.
- Stuck at the final gate - as of June 2026, the plant and machinery are fully installed but commercial production cannot begin until it receives a PESO (Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation) approval for ethanol storage and a Consent to Operate from the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board, with the start date now pushed to September 30, 2026.
- A hedge against sugar's cycle - the whole point of the ethanol plant is to diversify away from the seasonal, government-controlled sugar business by selling a product with mandated demand under India's renewable-energy blending programme.
Group structure and partners
A family-run, single-entity company with no subsidiaries or joint ventures, though it is trying to acquire a tanker company through insolvency proceedings.
- Promoter family at the controls - Mehmood Khan is the Managing Director with roughly three decades in distilling, his wife Munni Khan is Whole Time Director, and their son Anis Khan was appointed Chief Executive Officer in August 2025 on a five-year term.
- No other businesses on the books - the company has no subsidiaries, joint ventures, or associate companies, and no off-balance-sheet arrangements or special-purpose vehicles.
- One acquisition in progress - it has initiated a process to acquire Hindustan Tankers Private Limited under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, with the payment made to the National Company Law Tribunal, but ownership has not yet been confirmed and no capital has been infused into the target.