Bharti Shipyard aims to double turnover

Bharti Shipyard (BSL), a private shipbuilding company in India, expects to double its turnover to Rs 200 crore by the end of this financial year. The company recorded a turnover of Rs 100 crore for the quarter ended September 2004.

"The proceeds of initial public offer would be used to finance the Rs 70 crore expansion plan, involving setting up ship repairing facility, buying more equipment and extension of existing jetty which would boost our capacity and revenues," P C Kapoor, managing director, BSL said.

The company's IPO is scheduled to open on December 2 and close on December 8 and would involve the issue of 11.25 million shares through the book-building process. The price band has been fixed at Rs 55-66 a share.

The setting up of the dry-dock for ship-repairing would help the company avail benefits like being deemed as export oriented units and customs duty exemption on imported capital goods from custom duty, that the government has not given to the ship-building industry.

"With all our expansion plans to be completed by 2006, the annual capacity is also expected to more than double to 25,000 Dead Weight Tonnage ( DWT) from 9,000 DWT," Kapoor said.

A company official added that the business prospects for the company were looking up. "We have received inquiries from various overseas companies like Tidewater in the US,

which is the largest operator in Off-shore vessels. We are in talks with the company for about Rs 200 crore of the ship-building contract," he said.

The official added that there were other overseas contracts worth Rs 400-500 crore from countries like France, Norway that the company was negotiating.