Bilt Q4 net up 67%; plans Rs 1200 cr capex

Leading paper manufacturer Ballarpur Industries (Bilt) today reported 67.72% jump in net profit at Rs 67.88 crore for the quarter ended June 30 (Q4), as compared to Rs 40.47 crore for the same quarter in FY06.

For the year ended June 30, 2006 its net profit stood at Rs 212 crore, up 26.13% compared to Rs 168 crore last fiscal.

The company also announced plans to pump in about Rs 1,200 crore on capacity expansion of both its domestic and overseas units as it eyes 1 million tonne capacity by 2008 to be amongst the top 10 producers in Asia. "For the domestic units a total of Rs 900 crore will be invested in the next two years, which will see our capacity increase by 2.5 lakh tonnes by June 2008," B Hariharan, finance director of Bilt Group said here while announcing the company's annual results.

On the overseas front, he said the company would invest about $ 50-60 million (approximately Rs 276 crore) in the next three years on the pulp capacity expansion of Sabah Forest Industries in Malaysia, which it had acquired recently.

"The pulp capacity of Sabah will go up by 1 lakh tonne from the current 1.2 lakh tonne, while the paper production capacity is expected to increase by about 25,000 tonne from the current 1.4 lakh tonne through de-bottlenecking," he added.

Once the expansions were complete, Bilt's capacity will touch the 1 million mark tonne, which will put it amongst the top 10 producers in Asia and among the top 50 producers globally, he said.