-
Strong demand environment across all products.
-
Extreme climatic conditions in December impact European operations.
-
Global soda ash prices firm, GCIP and Magadi capacity utilisations improve.
-
Rising costs partially mitigated through price increases across decontrolled
products.
-
Introduction of NBS a positive for fertiliser industry, reduction of
benchmark prices for next fiscal a concern though.
-
New fertiliser policy for urea still awaited.
-
Insurance claim towards Babrala admitted — Rs39 crore accounted
on a conservative basis.
-
Production from customised fertiliser plant commences; product launched.
-
Planned shutdown at IMACID successfully completed; production impacted
for approximately 35 days.
-
Tata Swach sales continues strong growth — 9M FY2011 sales at 3.45
lakh units.
Commenting on the company's performance for Q3 and 9M FY2011, R Mukundan,
managing director, Tata Chemicals, said: “We are witnessing an encouraging
demand environment for all our businesses both domestically and overseas.
We continue to see pressures of increasing input prices. The unfortunate
weather events in Australia and Indonesia will put even greater pressure on
energy prices. We are working towards price increases to negate this impact.
The healthy improvement in production levels and demand growth enjoyed by
General Chemical Industrial Products (GCIP) is particularly encouraging. The
operations at Brunner Mond UK were impacted due to extreme weather conditions
in the later part of the quarter. With the acquisition of British Salt we
have secured the long term supply of brine, a key raw material for Brunner
Mond and also a new business — branded consumer and industrial salt in
the UK.
In the fertiliser sector, while the NBS is a positive development, the lower
benchmark prices set for DAP and MOP in a hardening price environment is a
challenge for the next fiscal. We continue to await the new urea policy as
well as allocation of gas for doubling our urea capacity at Babrala. Rallis
continues to perform well in a challenging environment. The acquisition of
Metahelix by Rallis fills in a vital gap in our overall agri strategy providing
us leading-edge technology for developing high-productivity seeds. In the
immediate future Metahelix's strong presence across the seeds value chain
enables us to offer high-quality trusted hybrid seeds to the farmer.
Our consumer products business continues to do extremely well with branded
salt maintaining a dominant 62 per cent market share and the range of Tata
Swach water purifiers enjoying excellent demand. We are also delighted to
extend our i-Shakti. brand to pulses as a natural evolution of our 'Farm to
Fork' strategy which leverages our strong association with the farmer and
our established retail presence to bring quality, hygienic and affordable
pulses to the Indian consumer. The business would have to address structural
challenges existing in infrastructure.
We are confident of the performance of our businesses but are cautious of
the increase in costs — energy in particular.”
Financial performance for nine months ended December 31, 2010
9M FY2011 (April — December 2010) v/s 9M FY2010 (April — December
2009)
Some of the statements in this document that are not historical facts
are forward looking statements. These statements are based on the present
business environment and regulatory framework. We assume no responsibility
for any action taken based on the said information, or to update the same
as circumstances change.