Originally incorporated as Vesuvius Refractories in Sep.'91, the name was subsequently changed to Vesuvius India in Nov.'92. The company was promoted by the Vesuvius group, UK, which at present holds 55.57% stake in the company, in association with Biswadip Gupta. The company is engaged in the manufacture of specialised ceramics required in the continuous casting process of steel making. The products manufactured are shrouds, monoblock stoppers, submerged nozzles and tundish nozzles. The company came out with a public issue in Sep.'93 to finance the setting up of an unit to manufacture 3000 tpa of specialised refractories. Later in 1996-97 it came out with a right issue at a premium of Rs 30/- per share to the existing equity shareholders in the ratio of two equity shares for every five equity shares held. The company installed a mixing plant for backward integration in the manufacturing process, and a second plant to expand the production capacity. These measures initiated to achieve better cost control have paid off. Initially, the company used to import the required mix from its parent, the Vesuvius Group Ltd, UK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cookson Group Plc. This had resulted in high costs and low margins for the company. However, with facilities to produce the required mix in India, these costs have fallen.The company acquired the assets and manufacturing rights of KSR International (India) Ltd for a consideration of Rs 21 millions. It also acquired the monolithic plant at Visakhapatnam from Carborundum Universal and also assigned the technical know-how from Answer Technologies Inc, USA for manufacture of Blast Furnace Casthouse Refractories and General Purpose Pumpables.In 2000-2001 the company has ventured into non-steel industry with its monolithics business using new technology.The company has acquired the crucible manufacturing unit of Diamant Carbon & Graphite Products Ltd during March 2003 at Mehsana,Gujarat.The technology has been sourced from Vesuvius,Germany.This is third manufacturing unit of the company.Crucibles are used in the Non-ferrous industry and this acquisition enhances the foray into the non-steel sector.The company has expanded the installed capacity of Refractories(Shaped) during the year 2004 by 90600(Pieces) and with this expansion,the total capacity has risen to 419600(Pieces).