BPL to merge battery units, hike capital

BPL Ltd, as part of its ongoing restructuring to regain its position in the consumer electronics market, is merging its alkaline battery division with BPL Soft Energy Systems. The company is also increasing its authorised capital to Rs 200 crore from Rs 140 crore.

P.V.K. Sundaram, vice-president, finance, said: "The alkaline battery division is currently a division of BPL Ltd. We are merging this division with our subsidiary BPL Soft Enery Systems which manufactures dry cells. We are steamlining the battery business into a single entity to gain more scale."

The alkaline battery division contributes around Rs 40 crore, while BPL Soft Energy Systems has a turnover of Rs 130 crore.

On increasing the authorise share capital, Sundaram said: "This is a part of the financial restructuring which is on at the BPL group. We have increased BPL Ltd's authorised capital from Rs 140 crore to Rs 200 crore by addition of 60,00,000 redeemable preference shares of Rs 100 each, aggregating Rs 60 crore. This is an ongoing process to restructure our debt and then get going on our business."

On steps being made to pave the way for the equity infusion from Sanyo, Sundaram said, "it is too premature to talk about that step."

However, according to analysts tracking BPL, this is more to do with making BPL a colour-TV-only business in which Sanyo will be initially interested in.

PTI adds: Sanyo, the Japanese conglomerate and leading liquid crystal display (LCD) projector supplier in the world market, is planning to put up a plant in China for production of entry-level LCD projectors.

"There is, however, no plan with the company to put up any plant in India", Okajima, chief of the Sanyo factory, told newsmen on Tuesday night in Chennai, when their master distributor 'office 2000', launched several audio visual products for educational, entertainment and the media fields.