A tight rein on costs, managing critical inputs such as power and coal will contribute positively to India Cements' performance in the current year, according to Mr N. Srinivasan, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, India Cements Ltd.

Addressing shareholders at the company's 65th AGM here on Wednesday, he said the company hopes to start raising coal at its mines in Indonesia by the fourth quarter of the current year.

Its 50-MW captive project has been set up in Tirunelveli and orders have been placed for equipment in Andhra Pradesh. The overseas mines and the captive power projects will help insulate the company from price and availability fluctuations of these key inputs.

Similar controls on costs have contributed to the company bucking the trend in the first quarter of the current year to report a net profit (Rs 102 crore), which was well over the net profit the company reported for the whole of 2010-11 (Rs 68 crore).

On the manpower front, the company with a capacity of about 14 million tonnes employs over 3,000. In terms of efficiencies of operations, India Cements is at the top, he said.

The concern in the industry is the huge excess capacity with about 115 million tonnes in capacity added in the last three years. Capacity utilisation was around 76 per cent last year against 85 per cent in the previous year.

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