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Promoters and management of the beleaguered Regency Ceramics Ltd, which was rocked by a violent labour unrest that resulted in two casualties and left many injured at its Yanam plant last week, are hopeful of taking a call on when to re-start the plant after estimating the damage within the next 15 days.
Options of either re-locating or selling the unit could also be considered, depending on the extent of damage and other external factors, a senior official of the company said.
Even four days after the violent incidents, the Yanam unit remains closed, with many of the injured employees and senior officials still untraceable, as they are not willing to come to the plant unless normalcy is restored.
Blank and confused
“We are totally blank and confused even today. Management representatives are yet to reach Yanam and most of our senior employees cannot be contacted, as they are still in the grip of fear,” the company's CMD, Mr G.N. Naidu, told newspersons here on Tuesday.
Although the company is yet to estimate the extent of damage and loss, the initial reports from its insurance companies have estimated the damage to be about Rs 150 crore. The company has an insurance cover of about Rs 500 crore.
The company has been suffering losses during the last six quarters, especially as the Yanam unit has been operating at 50 to 60 per cent of its capacity of about 40,000 sq.m per day.
“This is mainly on account of inadequate gas supplies. We are getting 72,000 cu.m a day, against our requirement of about 98,000 cu.m a day. Our accumulated losses will be about Rs 35 crore,” Mr Satyendra Prasad, Executive Director, said.
He said the company was in fact hoping to break even in the fourth quarter of this fiscal, with the launch of three new value-added vitrified tiles products registering an encouraging market response. “We were aiming at turning profitable by next fiscal. But things have entirely changed now,” he said.
The company has a debt burden of around Rs 80 crore as term loans and around Rs 35 crore as working capital. The banks were initially worried over the losses suffered by the Yanam facility, but they are now satisfied as there is adequate insurance coverage of around Rs 500 crore, Mr Prasad said.
The company has demanded a CBI enquiry into the incident, terming the attacks on its assets as a “pre-planned” one.
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