Balmer Lawrie plans Rs.3,500 crore turnover in 5 years

KOLKATA - State-owned conglomerate Balmer Lawrie plans to put in Rs.300 crore in six verticals to clock a turnover of Rs.3,500 crore in the next five years, a top company official said here Friday.

“We are looking at a turnover of Rs.3,500 crore in the next five years. We don’t plan to add any new product or services…we are looking at extending value chain of our existing products,” S.K. Mukherjee, managing director, told reporters on the sidelines of the 93rd annual general meeting of the company.

The company has targeted a turnover of Rs.2,000 crore in the current fiscal (2010-11) from Rs.1,672 crore in 2009-10.

Balmer Lawrie has six strategic business units - three in services sector and three in manufacturing. Of the total turnover, 60 percent comes from services and 40 percent from manufacturing, he said.

To achieve the targeted turnover, the company plans to invest Rs.300 crore over the next four years in its various businesses.

Talking about its loss-making tea business, he said the company would re-launch one of its tea brands ‘Tarang’ in the next six months.

“We are trying to revive our tea business. We will relaunch Tarang in the next six months…we will start in a limited way,” Mukherjee said.

The company is into the business of tea packaging and marketing. Last fiscal it had done a business of 125 tonnes.

At present, the company has two tea brands - Tarang and Indian Summer.

The company was passive in its tea business for the last three years and even thought of hiving it off or selling it. But now its is planning to revive it. It would invest Rs.1 crore to build-up inventory in the tea business.

The company is extremely bullish regarding its lubricant and grease business. It is looking at growing its marketshare in this business.

“We are investing Rs.30-40 crore in the next two years. We are strong in industrial grease but now we will focus in automotive lubricants,” V. Narayan Sharma, director (manufacturing businesses) of the company said.

This would help the company to double its overall marketshare of total lubricant business from 2.5-3.00 percent now to 6 percent in the future.

On its plan to set up a lubricant and grease plant in Indonesia investing $5 million, Mukherjee said: “Construction work has started.”

This is the company second manufacturing plant abroad after Dubai.

Regarding Transafe Services Ltd, he said P.B. Anand Rao would takeover as the standalone managing director of the company from Oct 1.

“We are hopeful to revive the company in three years,” he said.