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     This story was printed from CdrInfo.com,

     located at http://www.cdrinfo.com.

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Moser Baer India Ltd, the world's third-largest producer of recordable compact discs, plans to lift prices by up to 10 percent after a sharp rise in global demand, executive director Ratul Puri said on Wednesday.

Moser has an 11 percent share of the global optical storage media industry and competes with Taiwanese firms CMC Magnetics Corp, the top-ranked player, and Ritek Inc, the second-largest, in the $2 billion sector.

The New Delhi-based firm has an annual installed capacity of more than a billion CDRs.

"Today, we can't meet demand and we've booked (orders to) 140 percent of our capacity. It's outstripping supply by a very large margin," Puri said.

Moser sells a recordable compact discs (CDR) in more than three dozen countries for an average 22 cents each and about 85 percent of its annual sales come from exports.

Puri also said Moser's $120 million expansion at its plant on the outskirts of Delhi, which will increase CDR capacity by about 45 percent, was likely to be completed ahead of schedule.

"The German plant is to de-risk our manufacturing units in India and also since Europe is a significant portion of our overall revenue, a presence there is necessary," Puri said.

About half of Moser's exports are to the European Union and 25 percent each to the United States and the rest of the world.

Puri said the 20-year-old firm would spend about $15 million in stages on the German project.

Moser also makes the high margin digital versatile discs (DVDs) for the fast-growing home entertainment industry. DVDs have a higher storage capacity than a CDR and cost more.

Puri said Moser's DVD capacity was 100 million a year and the company also planned to increase capacity soon.