Mangalam Timber steps out of BIFR

Mangalam Timber Products (MTP), is set to come out of BIFR after seven years.

The company was the leading medium density fibre (MDF) board manufacturer in the country and belonged to the Rs 5,500 crore BK Birla group.

Mangalam Timber management will apply to the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) for de-registration as a sick company in September 2005.

The managing director of MTP, G S Gupta, told reporters here that the net worth of the company has become positive on March 31, 2005, and it was no longer a sick company.

MTP was referred to BIFR in 1998.

Gupta said the accumulated losses of the company had been brought down from Rs 19 crore to Rs 6.44 crore during 2004-05 after the adjustment of deferred tax assets.

MTP recorded a 400 per cent jump in net profit from Rs 48.37 lakh in 2003-04 to Rs 2.89 crore in 2004-05.

It achieved turnover of Rs 61.72 crore in 2004-05 from Rs 43.66 crore in 2003-04. The company was hoping to record a 20 per cent growth in turnover in the current fiscal.

According to Gupta, the company was now giving a special emphasis on plantation activities to ensure steady supply of raw materials in the future.

"We have earlier initiated farm forestry scheme in Orissa and Chhatisgarh in 2001. This year we have an ambitious plantation target of 20,000 acres, a majority of this will be in Andhra Pradesh," he said.

One of the directors of Mangalam Timber, S K Parik, said the first batch of plantation would mature by 2006 and would be ready for use.

"We hope that by end of 2008-09 entire raw material requirement can be sourced from our indigenous plantations. This will give us a tremendous advantage in the future," he said.

Parik said the group was hopeful that MTP would be operating at 100 per cent capacity from the present level of 80 per cent by the end of 2005-06.