The Bombay High Court has approved the demerger of the manufacturing business of Godrej Foods together with its marketing, sales, finance and other related functions into Godrej Industries. With this, a new foods division has been created in Godrej Industries, which will be headed by M P Pusalkar, who was earlier with Godrej Foods as executive director.
This division will take care of the manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution of the brands such as Jumpin and Xs fruit beverages, Cooklite and Godrej brand vegetable oils, vanaspati and bakery fats.
Under the scheme, every shareholder of Godrej Foods will be issued one share of Godrej Industries (par value of Rs 6 ) for 15 shares of Godrej Foods (par value of Rs 10).
Godrej Foods will retain the oil trading business of the erstwhile company. As a part of the scheme, the paid-up share capital of Godrej Foods which is of Rs 28.36 crore will be reduced to Rs 2.83 crore.
Meanwhile, Godrej Consumer Products has posted a net profit of Rs 12.30 crore for third quarter ended December 31, 2001. The sales for the period under review stood at Rs 126.43 crore.
Net profit and sales for the nine months ended December 2001 stood at Rs 32.13 crore and Rs 379.36 crore respectively. Other operating income for the nine months at Rs 15.74 crore includes Rs 10.66 crore on account of sale of by-products and Rs 5.08 crore as processing charges for contract manufacturing, the company release said.
Company chairman Adi Godrej said , 'Focus on key brands, increased efficiencies of sales and distribution and better capital management have contributed to growth in profits.
GPCL was incorporated in November 2000 with the objective of taking over the consumer products division of Godrej soaps Ltd (subsequently renamed as godrej industries Ltd) as a going concern.
Effective April 1, 2001, the division has been demerged into GCPL, which did not engage in any activity during year ended march 31, 2001 and therefore there are no previous year's figures, it said.
The company's buyback at a maximum of Rs 100 a share (face value of Rs four) for an aggregate amount not exceeding Rs 9.30 crore through the open markets has commenced from January 21, it added.
Despite the slowdown in the industry, the sales turnover of the company's brands for the nine month period grew by 10 per cent to Rs 333.0 crore as against Rs 302.6 crore (sales of the company's brands of the consumer products division of the former Godrej Soaps Ltd) for the same period last year.
