Balmer Lawrie eyes Rs 125 cr capex in FY19

Kolkata: Diversified PSU Balmer Lawrie & Co, under the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, is planning to make a capital expenditure of Rs 125 crore in the current financial year, an official said.

The money would be mainly spent to strengthen the company's logistics, grease and lubricants, and industrial packaging verticals, its chairman and managing director Prabal Basu said Wednesday.

The company published its financial report in Kolkata following its 101 annual general meeting at GD Birla Sabhaghar on Wednesday.

Balmer Lawrie recorded net turnover of Rs 1,797 crore during 2017-18 as against Rs 1,779 crore in 2016-17 registering an increase of around one per cent than the last financial year. The company also recorded a profit before tax (PBT) of Rs 261.12 in 2017-18 as against Rs 254.11 crore in the previous financial year.

While talking to the media during a press conference, CMD Basu said that the upcoming Vadodara plant in Gujarat would be commissioned by the month-end which would manufacture steel drums with an annual capacity of six lakh units.

A warehouse has also been constructed in Hyderabad which will be commissioned in June-July next year where various medical equipments would be produced.

Balmer Lawrie bagged a contract for providing warehousing and distribution facility for medical equipment manufacturing unit which has already been set up at Andhra Pradesh Med Tech Zone Ltd on Build, Operate, Manage and maintain (BOMM) basis.

Considering the potential in cold chain logistics, the company has also set up two temperature controlled warehouses — one at Hyderabad and the other at Rai in Haryana. The third one at Patalganga near Mumbai is expected to be ready for commercial operation by the end of this year. It may be mentioned here that the company is in the process of commissioning the multi model logistic hub (MMLH) at Visakhapatnam for handling Exim and domestic cargo.

Logistics Services (LS) suffered a de-growth of 9 per cent due to stiff competition in the air and ocean freight segments. LS had been able to increase its business from the private sector by 3 per cent on year-on-year basis, with the major increase coming from ocean export freight from Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata branches.

Basu also mentioned that the company has a steel drum plant in Kolkata but it is not getting enough order. As there is no such demands of chemic and petroleum products it has an adverse impact on the steel drum market in this region.