The Hindu Business Line : Thermax net up 14 %

Pune, July 22 Thermax Ltd, a player in energy and environment solutions, has recorded a net profit of Rs 63.7 crore as against Rs 56 crore, a 14 growth per cent for the first quarter of the current fiscal.

The company’s total income increased to Rs 727.2 crore from Rs 676.3 crore, up by 7.5 per cent.

Talking to presspersons after the annual general meeting, Mr M.S. Unnikrishnan, Managing Director, and Ms Meher Pudumjee, Chairperson, Thermax Ltd, said consolidated net profit was Rs 58.4 crore as against Rs 55.6 crore and consolidated total income increased to Rs 783 crore against Rs 723.9 crore for the corresponding period last year.

Chinese Facility

Mr Unnikrishnan said the manufacturing facility at China has started trial production and would commence operations by the end of this month. The Thermax (Zhejiang) Cooling and Heating Engineering Co. Ltd., (TZL) wholly owned subsidiary, has been incorporated to set up an absorption chiller manufacturing facility.

He said with TZL coming into operations, the Thermax Hong Kong Ltd, (THKL) wholly owned subsidiary established for the dual purpose of making a foray into the Chinese absorption cooling market and to provide support for the sourcing activities for the various businesses, would be closed.

THKL activities have been taken over by TZL and no significant new business was anticipated in the current fiscal. THKL had posted an income of HK$8.2 million and profit after tax of HK$34,742.

Mr Unnikrishnan said the Thermax do Brasil, another subsidiary, has been put under hibernation. He noted that during 2007-08, it had recorded sales income of BRL 0.4 million against BRL 0.7 million during the previous fiscal.

The business model of providing service to customers had been changed from direct engagement to a franchisee agreement from November 2007 and the future of the subsidiary was uncertain.

New focus

Thermax would focus on the South-East Asia and the West Asia markets and the company was in the process of drawing up an integrated plan with a wide portfolio of products to expand into these regions.

Mr Unnikrishnan said during 2007-08, it had signed three agreements to acquire new technology. With the technical transfer agreement with Babcock and Wilcox of the US, it would manufacture sub-critical utility boilers up to 800 MW for the power sector.

A separate unit is being created to look after this business. He said the second agreement was with Balcke-Durr of Germany for advanced design of pollution control equipment for power, industrial and utility segment up to 300 MW. The third is with Georgia Pacific of the US to manufacture performance enhancing chemicals for the paper industry.

With this agreement, Thermax could expand its paper chemical business to India and South-East Asia. He said a US company would be offshoring the entire chiller manufacturing to Thermax. He said the US company has been in existence for the past five decades and is in the air-conditioner space. He said Thermax would manufacture the chillers, either in India or in China, and these would be marketed in the US. The brand names of both the companies would be present, he said.

Home turf

On the domestic front, he said the first phase of the boiler plant at Savli in Gujarat has been completed and commercial production has begun. Phase two and three would be completed by the end of the current fiscal and added that when completed, the output of the boilers would double from the present capacity