ABOUT 22-acres of NTC mill land in the prime Mumbai locations would soon be developed into textile-related commercial complex by Pantaloon, Alok Industries and Bhaskar Industries. National Textile Corporation (NTC) has signed agreements with the private firms for operating its four units in Mumbai and one in Aurangabad. The agreements allows private investors to utilise the surplus land for commercial purposes. While Pantaloon would form a JV with NTC for its two properties — Apollo Textile Mills (3.93 acres) and Goldmohur Textile Mills (0.53 acres); Bhaskar Industries would develop India United Mills No 1 which has 10.74 acres of surplus land. Alok Industries has got the New City Bombay Manufacturing Mills with 6.7 acres of surplus land. Alok has also got one mill in Aurangabad with 16 acres of surplus land. Confirming the move NTC chairman & managing director K Ramachandran Pillai told ET: “We have signed an in-principle agreement with the companies for forming the JV company where NTC would have 51% equity stake.” “NTC would form a joint venture (JV) company for each of the five properties. The private sector partners would have the management control with 49% equity stake in the each JVs,” he said. Private partners would invest to modernise and develop these mills and would be able to commercially utilise the surplus land. NTC will not invest any money. Its investment is in the form of properties. The JV partners would also give a lump-sum signing amount to NTC. In total, it would get about Rs 100 crore for the five JVs. According to a decision of the group of ministers on the issue, a JV partner can use the surplus land for commercial development, like malls, textile training institute or anything that is related to textile, garment or accessories. NTC had invited bids for all of its 16 mills across Maharashtra. However, it did not get any bidders for 11 properties. There were as many as 14 bidders, including Nitco and Soom Developers, for the Mumbai-based properties.