Essar

Essar Group's IT arm Black Box has reported a 60 per cent jump in consolidated net profit to Rs 51.14 crore for the July-September quarter, helped by operating leverage. It had reported a net profit of Rs 31.96 crore in the year-ago period, according to a regulatory filing. Its revenue for the quarter under review declined 4.89 per cent to Rs 1,497.2 crore from Rs 1,574.3 crore in Q2 FY24. The company's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) for the quarter increased 34 per cent to Rs 135 crore, a statement said. "The company's commitment towards better performance achieved through operating leverage has led to growth in both EBITDA and PAT margins," it added. Seen sequentially, profit and revenue rose by 37.88 per cent and 5.19 per cent, respectively. Black Box Whole Time Director Sanjeev Verma said the company's cost optimisation efforts will yield consistent growth in operating performance and enhanced productivity, leading to better margins.

Manu Kapoor is an established leader with a successful career managing corporate reputation and brands across the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Asia

Essar Group on Friday announced the appointment of Manu Kapoor as its Group Chief for public policy and corporate affairs. Kapoor joins the company with over three decades of specialised experience with corporations, governments, public sector agencies, and industry groups. He is an established leader with a successful career in managing corporation's reputation and brands across the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Russia, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), eastern Europe, Baltics and Asia. He carries an in-depth knowledge of the geo-political landscape across the globe. Prashant Ruia, Director, Essar Capital, said, "Manu will be responsible for building and maintaining strategic relationships with key stakeholders, including businesses, government bodies, regulators, media, and policymakers". "Essar is strengthening its global presence in energy transition, green steel, digitisation, technology, and innovation. It's an incredible opportunity to collaborate with industry

Essar group will turn the UK's Stanlow refinery into the world's first decarbonised green refinery as it plans to use blue hydrogen for meeting heating and power needs of the unit, cutting carbon emissions by as much as 95 per cent, a top official said Tuesday. Speaking at FT's Energy Transition Summit India, Prashant Ruia, director of Essar Capital, which manages the group's portfolio of investments, said Essar Energy Transition's (EET) HyNet project will produce 350-megawatt of blue hydrogen in phase-1 and another 1 gigawatt in phase-II. Since the UK does not have solar and wind potential to produce renewable electricity which could be used to split water in an electrolyser to produce green hydrogen and oxygen, EET will use natural gas to produce blue hydrogen and also capture and permanently store carbon produced during the process. "We are going to make this (Stanlow) the world's first decarbonised green refinery. We are decarbonising 95 per cent of our carbon dioxide (CO2)" ...

Essar Group's IT arm Black Box expects the share of India business to grow by 1-2 percentage points in its course to become a USD 2 billion revenue company by 2027-28, a top official of the company said. The company specialises in building IT infrastructure for critical technology applications including hyperscaler data centres and planning to bring its learning to the Indian market as many of the company's global customers are looking to invest in the country, Black Box CEO Sanjeev Verma told PTI. He said that the company plans to increase employee headcount across all levels in India to around 1,000 people from about 600 people at present. "Currently, India is 6 per cent of our business. We do not expect it to become much larger, but if we have to go to USD 2 billion then it will be significantly important for us to move it to 7- 8 per cent," Verma said. The company has reported revenue of around USD 750 in FY2024. Verma said that Black Box want to bring some value to India base

Essar Shipping on Thursday reported a consolidated loss of Rs 34.53 crore in the first quarter ended June 2024. The company had clocked a profit of Rs 26.13 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago, the company said in a regulatory filing to the BSE. Its total income from operations in the June quarter declined to Rs 11.57 crore, against Rs 48.48 crore in the year-ago period. The firm's total expenses stood at Rs 40.56 crore, compared to Rs 30.47 crore in the year-ago period. The company said it's current liabilities, including outstanding portion of Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds (FCCB) which have fallen due for redemption, exceed its current assets as on June 30, 2024.

Essar Group is awaiting final approvals to start investing about USD 4.5 billion in building a low-carbon steel plant in Saudi Arabia, its top official Prashant Ruia said. The approvals are expected anytime now, after which the conglomerate will start working on the 4 million tonne per year steel plant along with port facilities at Ras Al-Khair in Saudi Arabia. "We still haven't got all the final approvals," Ruia, director of Essar Capital, which manages the group's portfolio of investments, said in an interview with PTI. The plant will meet domestic steel demand in Saudi Arabia. "Saudi Arabia is going through a large growth phase, a large part of steel today is getting imported into Saudi Arabia. So this is basically a domestic plant," he said. The oil-rich kingdom is eyeing becoming an electric vehicle manufacturing hub, manufacturing more than 3 lakh cars annually by 2030. Essar is looking to tap into the demand for steel for such cars as well as for other consumer goods ...

Essar Group sees huge growth potential in its IT firm Black Box with boom in artificial intelligence (AI) technology driving demand for new data centres and managed services across the globe, a top official of the multinational conglomerate said. In an exclusive interview with PTI, Prashant Ruia, director of Essar Capital, which manages the group's portfolio of investment, expressed confidence in the sector. "This is a company which can see tremendous growth, because the kind of growth taking place in data centres and managed services globally is exponential," he said. Black Box, listed on the Indian stock exchanges, has operations spread across 35 countries, but its major business comes from the US. "It's obviously listed in India, but it's primarily headquartered, main operations are in the US. We currently do about USD 800 million of revenue in Black Box... about 75 per cent of the market for us is the US. We have a very large operation headquartered in Dallas, we have close to

Essar Oil and Gas Exploration & Production Ltd is speeding up capital expenditure plans to explore and produce unconventional hydrocarbons that will help raise gas output at its flagship block to about 5 million standard cubic meters per day from less than 1 mmscmd now, its CEO said. EOGEPL is India's largest producer of Coal-Bed Methane (CBM) which just like conventional gas can be used as CNG in automobiles or as feedstock in industries. Buoyed by investor-friendly upstream policy reforms in recent years, including providing marketing and pricing freedom for CBM, the firm is drilling more wells, including horizontal ones, that will help tap into wider resources lying below coal seam in its Raniganj East block in West Bengal, EOGEPL CEO Pankaj Kalra told reporters on the sidelines of the India Energy Week. The firm currently produces 0.9 mmscmd of gas or 1 per cent of India's total gas output. "Our drilling campaign will see production rise to 2.3-2.4 mmscmd in the next 14-15 ...

We are making significant advances in energy transition, focusing on hydrogen, green mobility, and green steel ecosystems, Ruia said

IT solutions provider Black Box is expanding footprint in India as demand for digital infrastructure and data centre integration space grows, a company official said. Black Box, one of Essar's flagship businesses in technology and retail vertical, recently set up a centre of excellence in Bengaluru to support its global clients. The centre is equipped with advanced research and development laboratories, command centres, a service desk, and delivery operations targeting its client needs. "India holds significant importance as a market for us, serving both Indian conglomerates and global customers. We have a positive outlook on our growth potential in India and will continue to invest here," said Sanjeev Verma, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Black Box Corporation. The ongoing digitisation initiative of the government and the strong demand for data centres are areas the firm would evaluate, given its expertise in working with hyper-scale customers, he said. The company is expanding

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) announced in July that it is investing $122 million alongside Brookfield in a data centre joint venture

Essar has been tying up the back end for its proposed Saudi steel plant, which is expected to start production in 2027

Essar Group on Monday signed a pact with solar PV firm Desert Technologies for developing renewable energy solutions for the Indian conglomerate's KSA Green Steel Arabia project. "Both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop renewable energy solutions for Essar Group's Green Steel Arabia (GSA) project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as well as potential future projects which will put Saudi Arabia on the map, as a pioneering country in Green Steel production and green energy generation," the company said in a statement. Through this partnership, DT and Essar will develop solutions for renewable energy generation and storage for Essar's flat steel complex in the KSA which is the first green steel project in the Gulf region and will also explore opportunities for other potential projects. Essar is investing USD 4.5 billion in building a 4 million tonne per annum integrated steel plant in Ras Al-Khair, Saudi Arabia. Essar's GSA project is poised to be the ...

The PAT for the quarter was up 12 per cent due to improvement in sales volume, it said in a statement

Essar Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Ltd (EOGEPL) will invest another Rs 2,000 crore in the next 18 to 24 months in its coal bed methane project in West Bengal's Raniganj, an official said. The company earlier had already invested Rs 5,000 crore in the Raniganj block in drilling 350 wells and producing nearly 0.9 million metric standard cubic metres (mmscd) of gas per day. Chief executive officer (CEO) of EOGEPL, Pankaj Kalra, told PTI that another investment of Rs 2,000 crore will be made for drilling 200 more wells in the next 18 to 24 months. "We are employing the latest technology in the existing wells to ramp up production from 0.9 mmscd to 1.3 mmscd which will be completed in a few months ", Kalra said. Total CBM production from Ranigunj will touch around three mmscd when the additional wells become operational, Kalra added. He said the company is currently contributing nearly 65 per cent to the country's total CBM production, which is likely to go up to 90 per cen

Vertex Hydrogen project will support UK government's net zero ambitions, says company

Setting up steel plant in Saudi, an iron pellet plant each in Odisha, US

Will invest $1.2 bn to develop a global supply hub for low-carbon fuels

Vertex Hydrogen is a leader in the energy transition, developing the UK's first large scale, low carbon hydrogen production hub at Essar's site in Ellesmere Port