Tamil Nadu based Thiru Arooran Sugars (THIRUSUG) was founded in 1954. Thiru Arooran is basically a sugar company, which is in the business of manufacturing sugar, portable and industrial alcohol and ethanol. It operates from Tirumandankudi in Thanjavur district and Chittur in Cuddalore district of Andhra Pradesh. The company has a sugarcane crushing capacityof 7500 MT per day and a distillery with 60 KLPD as of Sept. 30, 2005. Shree Ambika Sugars is an associate company and Terra Energy which is in to cogenerated energy, is a subsidiary of Thiru Arooran. Recently when Govt. of India announced of blending ethanol with petrol, the company has set up facilities to manufacture ethanol at the existing distillery. The company targetted around 15 lakh MTs of crushed cane during 2005-06, as against 9.54 lakh MTs during 2004-05. With an investment of Rs 60 million the company has implemented a project for energy conservation, which besides resulting in reduced steam and power consumption; reduce the cost of sugar production by maximizing cane crushing during the peak recovery period. The company has installed a reverse osmosis plant at a cost of around Rs 60 million, which on stabilisation will enable recycling of nearly 50% of the distillery effluent back into the process.