Empee Sugars wipes out Rs 25 cr debt

Empee Sugars & Chemicals Ltd, part of the Empee Group has cleared term loan amounting to Rs 25.35 crore with IDBI and ICICI Bank on a one-time settlement arrangement.

P K Das, vice-president "" finance and company secretary, ESCL, said the company had cleared debt worth Rs 19.35 crore with ICICI Bank and Rs 6 crore with IDBI.

The promoters coughed up Rs 13 crore and the remaining was funded by internal accruals. The company also expects to repay its loan of Rs 5 crore to IFCI in the next couple of months.

Das said that the company's efforts to improve turnover and profitability by improving capacity utilisation, improvement in efficiency parameters and cost optimisation have paid off.

The company had reduced its accumulated losses to Rs 9 crore in 2004-05 from Rs 12 crore the previous year. Empee Sugars and Chemicals Ltd reported a 79 per cent growth in net profits to Rs 2.83 crore for the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2005 compared to Rs 1.58 crore.

The company's net income from sales increased by 11.22 per cent to Rs 25.66 crore for the last quarter in 2004-05 (Rs 23.07 crore).

Net profits registered a growth of 716 per cent to Rs 2.04 crore for the year ending March 31, 2005 (Rs 25.90 lakh). Net income from sales reported a fall by 18.24 per cent to Rs 48.75 crore in 2004-05 ( Rs 59.63 crore).