The Brij Mohan Khaitan Group is in the process of charting growth plans for Powercell Battery India, which owns brands acquired from BPL, and is planning to make it another distribution giant like Eveready Industries India. Powercell Battery India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eveready Industries India.Powercell Battery India would have its own identity and could become a distribution company like Eveready, Deepak Khaitan, executive vice chairman and managing director of Eveready Industries India (EIIL), said."We are looking at increasing distribution of the company. It could take on other products, as well" Khaitan said. The company is planning to introduce torches under the Powercell brand by 2007-08.The group could even list Powercell on the bourses in the future. At present, Powercell Battery India has two brands, Powercell and Shakti under the BPL umbrella brand. According to the contours of the agreement, at the time of acquisition, the BPL brand could be used for 30 months from last October. Khaitan said, both Powercell and Shakti brands would be retained. The production of Powercell and Shakti was being managed by Eveready.The manufacturing capacity under Eveready would be 2.1 billion batteries by March 2008. Powercell Battery sold around 200 million batteries last year and the company is eyeing a 20% growth this year. Powercell has a 7% market share and Eveready 48%.Eveready is looking at increasing capacity at its Kolkata unit by de-bottlenecking. The investment would be in the region of Rs 40-45 crore.The greenfield plant in Uttaranchal is expected to be onstream by 2007-08, which would take the capacity from 1.3 billion batteries to 1.7 billion batteries.The company would also evaluate the option of raising battery prices in July-August, if zinc prices increased. The company was covered till $3,500 per tonne for zinc prices, Khaitan said.Meanwhile, Eveready Industries India posted an increase of 69% in net profit to Rs 79.66 crore. Net sales were up 12%, in the year ended March 31, 2006 to Rs 732.81 crore. The growth was accounted for both by increase in sales volumes as well as higher unit sales realisations. Borrowings were brought down to Rs 378 crore as at March 31, 2006, from Rs 509 crore. Placement of GDRs brought proceeds of $33 million, which was used to pay down debt. The company has recommended a dividend of 40%.Encouraged by a 119% rise in net profit to Rs 44.41 crore in the January-March quarter, the battery major has decided to infuse Rs 110 crore over the next two years to expand the capacity of units."We will invest Rs 70 crore during the current financial year at the Uttaranchal plant and next year, another Rs 40 crore for de-bottlenecking the Kolkata and Chennai plants," Khaitan said.
