Sanjiv Goenka steers PCBL to four-fold profit growth

Kolkata: Phillips Carbon Black Ltd (PCBL) on Tuesday posted a four-fold jump in net profit to Rs 50.78 crore in the quarter ended September up from Rs 12.49 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

"This is the best ever quality and half yearly results for the quarter and half year ended 30th September 2017. The higher profit came on the back of higher sales and better capacity utilisation.," PCBL chairman Sanjiv Goenka said.

The Board of Directors of the company held a meeting in Kolkata and declared an interim dividend of Rs 6 per share. The revenue for second quarter of FY 18 also stood at Rs 601.20 crores up from Rs 513.46 crores in the last quarter of FY 17.

Phillips Carbon Black Ltd has set a target of bringing down the debt to Rs 700 crores by the end of this fiscal down from Rs 1200 crores on the end of March 2017.

"The company has started work on expanding capacity through a 1.2-lakh tonne per annum greenfield plant, which will be set up in south India. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are among the states under consideration for the new unit. The site will be finalised over the next few months, " Goenka said.

The South India plant may entail an investment of Rs 500 to Rs 600 crores. The 80,000-tonne capacity brownfield expansion in Palej and Mundra in Gujarat that entails an investment of Rs300 crore is likely to be complete by the end of FY19.

PCBL, a part of $2500 million (or 2.5 billion) RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, has a business of $500 million and four strategically located state-of-the-art plants at Durgapur, Palej, Cochin and Mundra. PCBL today is India's largest and globally seventh largest carbon black producer. Set up in collaboration with a US company Phillips Petroleum, PCBL started production in December 1962.