Sales turnover and other income for the nine months ended December 1999 stood at Rs 138.61 crore. From this year, the company will adopt the calendar year as its accounting year. The net profit for the period under review was Rs 6 crore as against Rs 3.23 crore the previous year.

Lila Poonawalla, chairperson, told the shareholders that the company had done well in the exports front this year at Rs 26.11 crore. The offtake of separators and decanters by group companies increased substantially.

While exports to Asian and African markets continued, the company made inroads into the Japanese and Middle East markets.

Alfa Laval managing director Satish Tandon said that this year, the company expects to do business of around Rs 170crore.

The company has set a target of 10 per cent profitability.

Exports would touch Rs 40 crore by end of 2000.

Explaining the reasons behind the sale of the food processing division, Poonawalla said that the decision for the same was taken as the company wanted to focus on Alfa Laval's core products.

Apart from low returns, the food processing division also did not have synergy with the main line of activities of Alfa Laval.

This division was engaged in providing project engineering services and sale of capital goods to dairy and liquid food as well as carbonated soft drink industries. This division accounts for about 20 per cent of the company's total turnover of which 10 per cent comes from products.

Even after the sale, Alfa Laval will continue to supply products such as separators and heat exchangers to Tetra Pak.

The amount realised from the sale of this business will be utilised for expansion and modernisation of the manufacturing facilities and develop new separator models andincrease decanter volumes.

The new series of separators is expected to have a good market potential especially in the South East Asian markets.