Mumbai, May 4: The turnover of Indo Gulf Fertilisers, an Aditya Birla group company, has gone up to Rs 639 crore, reflecting a 35 per cent increase over the last year of Rs 473 crore. The net profit was up 31 per cent at Rs 141 crore from Rs 108 crore. The directors have recommended a higher dividend of 20 per cent against 18 per cent paid last year.During the year, the gross profit amounted to Rs 197 crore (Rs 164 crore). The provision for depreciation stood at Rs 39 crore (Rs 40 crore) and for taxation at Rs 17 crore (Rs 16 crore). EPS went up to Rs 7.37 (Rs 5.79).
The company achieved a record production of 9.33 lakh tonnes of urea, the highest ever, operating at over 120 per cent of capacity. The commendable performance of the plant is largely attributable to the continuous upgradation process which includes commissioning of equipment to use both naptha and natural gas as a fuel in the primary reformer, which in turn helps increase productivity and plant stream days.
As Indo Gulf is one of the mostenergy efficient and lowest cost producers of urea, the Hanumantha Rao Committee's recommendations for uniform ex-factory price mechanism will facilitate achievement of higher profitability compared to the existing pricing policy, which is not conducive enough to encourage efficient and cost conscious units.
As part of its diversification programme, the company is setting up a custom copper smelter project at Dahej in Gujarat. The project, involving a capital outlay of Rs 1850 crore, has a capacity of 100,000 TPA of copper cathodes, with a built-in provision of expansion upto 150,000 TPA. Indo Gulf's world size plant has proven technology sourced from Outokumpu of Finland, world leaders in this field. The continuous cast copper rod plant, refinery and anode casting plant have already been commissioned. Considerable progress has been achieved in the commissioning of the smelter which is expected to start trial production during this month.
A 116 per cent increase in the production recorded by Indo Gulfhas been because its plant was shut down for the first quarter of 1996-97. Thus there is very little to compare with the previous year's result. However, in spite of a shutdown in the previous year the company had managed an operating margin of 30.84 per cent as against 25.86 per cent in the current fiscal. The drop in margin is because of higher contribution of traded fertilisers.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
