Refractory maker Vesuvius India Ltd will soon make the new manufacturing unit at Visakhapatnam operational. According to the company sources, this would be the third plant of VIL in the port city of Andhra Pradesh. It is being set up on a 15-acre plot.

Multinational Cookson group’s local listed arm VIL has four operating units in the country. The two existing Andhra Pradesh units have a capacity of 60,000 tonnes a year. The unit will host an R&D centre. The company’s plant in city completed its expansion last year, which increased VIL’s shaped product capacity to 7.42 lakh pieces.

VIL’s move is significant as its parent has been shifting businesses to the Indian outfit from Europe. Around 75 per cent of the VIL’s products are meant for the steel sector.

The total capacities of VIL is, however, divided into two categories — shaped and unshaped — because of difference in products and usages.

Net profit

Meanwhile, the company improved its net profit in the January-March this year to Rs 17.64 crore from Rs 11.56 crore recorded in the first quarter of the last year. A top management source said the improvement was mainly because of improvement in internal efficiencies and relative easing of pressure on margins.

“Margin decline was most severe at the beginning of the last financial year,” the source said. The company follows the calendar year as the financial year. The shareholders at its AGM here on Thursday approved VIL board’s recommendation of 45 per cent dividend for 2012.

> jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in

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