N R Agarwal Industries is India’s largest maker of grey and white back duplex boards - the stiff, printable sheets that become boxes for your medicine, cosmetics and online orders - and one of the country’s biggest recycled-paper manufacturers. Founded in 1993 by R N Agarwal, it was among the first Indian mills to build quality paper entirely from waste paper rather than cutting trees, and it has spent three decades turning that early bet into a structural cost advantage. The playbook that explains everything that follows is simple: sweat assets to their maximum, buy and build capacity at the lowest capital cost per tonne among peers, and locate plants where the customers are - western India - while rivals ship product across the country. # Business segments A single engine with two product families - a dominant paperboard business that is the company’s present and future, and a legacy writing-and-printing paper line that has been deliberately shrunk to free capital for board - both fed by the same recycled-waste-paper backbone and low-cost power plant. ## 1. Paperboard: the packaging backbone that carries the company **The company is India’s largest duplex-board manufacturer and, after commissioning the country’s biggest single-location paperboard machine, can produce roughly half a million tonnes a year - with another giant plant already being assembled.** - **Largest single-location machine in India** - the new Duplex Board Plant (PM2) at Sarigam, Gujarat, started up in March 2024 with an installed capacity of 725 tonnes per day (240,000 tonnes a year) and was quickly stretched to 900 tonnes per day by adding balancing equipment in the pulping section. That 900-tonne daily capacity was reached at what management calls “around the lowest capital cost per ton when compared to peers with similar capacities”. - **Built cheap, then expanded cheaper** - the initial 500-tonne-per-day configuration cost ₹1,000 crore; lifting it to 900 tonnes per day required only ₹350 crore more, so more than half as much capacity again was added for just 15% extra capital. A 7.5 MW power plant that burns plastic extracted from the waste-paper raw material was included in that spend, generating electricity at ₹4 per unit - half the grid price - and covering 36% of the new facility’s power needs. - **Location is a moat** - most Indian paperboard mills sit in the east, but the bulk of demand growth comes from western India, so rivals pay high freight to reach the same customers NRAIL serves from a plant 165 km from Mumbai Port and 18 km from Tumb Port. About 60% of output is sold in western India and another 30% is exported to over 33 countries, leaving very little to ship long distances domestically. - **Closing the old, building the next giant** - two older duplex-board units were shut permanently (Unit III in January 2023 and Unit IV, which was not in operation from July 1, 2024 and whose permanent closure was decided on July 31, 2025) because they were no longer viable, while the surviving Unit I had its permitted capacity raised from 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes a month with no extra capital spend. Meanwhile, a second mega-plant (Unit VI) is being assembled at Dahej, Gujarat: a 4.3-metre-wide used paper machine bought from China, originally rated at 1,020 tonnes per day, is being upgraded to 1,500 tonnes per day, with a revised project cost of about ₹1,500 crore and 150 acres of land being acquired. - **What it makes and who buys it** - the product range spans coated duplex board (grey back and white back), folding box board, and solid bleached sulphate, all certified for food contact by India’s Central Food Technological Research Institute. End-markets are FMCG packaging, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, consumer goods and food packaging, with e-commerce shipping adding a growing layer of demand. A new value-added food-grade folding box board was launched from the Sarigam machine in July 2025, aimed at replacing imports. ## 2. Writing and printing paper: the legacy line that was deliberately pruned **Once a two-machine business making textbook and office paper, this segment was shrunk to a single machine so the company could sell a factory, repay all long-term debt, and redirect its energy toward packaging board.** - **Sold a unit to go debt-free** - in FY22 the company divested Unit II, a writing-and-printing mill at Vapi, to Shree Ajit Pulp and Paper for ₹99 crore, using the proceeds to repay all long-term debt so that it did not need to draw working-capital bank lines the following year. That unit had contributed 18% of turnover, but management judged that digitalisation would keep shrinking demand for printing and textbook paper. - **One surviving machine** - after the sale, writing-and-printing capacity dropped from 460 tonnes per day to 296 tonnes per day, all from Unit V at Sarigam. The machine makes surface-sized and non-surface-sized maplitho paper for textbooks and publishing, plus copier paper sold under the “Brilliance Copier” brand. - **Same backbone, different end-use** - the writing-and-printing line runs on the same 100% recycled waste-paper raw material, the same low-cost power plant, and the same western-India-focused dealer network as the paperboard business, so it benefits from the group’s cost structure without requiring a separate supply chain. # Group structure and partners **The company is a standalone, family-managed entity with no subsidiaries or joint ventures - every mill is owned and run directly by the parent.** - Promoters held 73.96% of the company as of March 2025, with founder R N Agarwal as Chairman and Managing Director and three next-generation family members in executive roles - Rohan Agarwal (Executive Director & CEO), Raunak Agarwal (Executive Director), and Reena Agarwal (Executive Director). - The Board has nine directors: five executive and four independent non-executive, with no schemes of arrangement, demergers or spin-outs during any reported period. - In May 2026 the Board amended the company’s charter to permit developing industrial galas, sheds and warehouses on its land for sale or lease to third parties, though no such activity had begun at the time of approval.