"A number of projects might be coming up overseas if things move as per plan, including one nitrogen plant in Africa," he said.

The company was not averse to coming out with a rights issue to increase working capital at a time when the parent company had also agreed to pump in fresh funds for viable projects, he said. The immediate priority is to attain a return of around 15 per cent as per the parent company's expectation and for this we will have to come out with an annual profit of above Rs 35 crore," he said. During the second quarter of the current fiscal, BOC reported a meagre profit of Rs 0.30 crore after sustaining losses for more than eight quarters at a stretch.

The Indian arm ran into rough weather over the past two fiscals with huge losses, forcing it to undertake a restructuring exercise that included drastic reduction in the workforce both at higher and lower levels. BOC's market share in India came down drastically to around 11 per cent during these years with the onslaught of a number of multinational gas companies, from a peak of above 45 per cent 15 years back. Mr Pandya said that as part of the restructuring the employees' strength was brought down to 640 at present from around 1,500 a few years back and fresh hands were recruited for direct marketing.

The company acknowledged that the presence of rivals like Paraxair, Air Product and Inox, had shaken it out of its slumber. The company was also working on a plan to sell its plots located in posh areas and utilise others as LPG bottling plants.

All these efforts helped the company record a growth of 16 per cent mainly owing to increase in the plant utilisation capacity by 19 per cent and reduction in debts by Rs 20 crore. Another factor that contributed to the turnaround was the negotiation of interest from 18 to 13.5 per cent for loans of about Rs 170 crore taken for the oxygen plant at Jamshedpur, said Mr Pandya.