Bharti Shipyard, a Mumbai-based shipbuilding firm, said it expects sales to grow more than three-fold by March 2012, helped by demand from the offshore industry pouring in for new vessels and rigs. The company, which was facing capacity constraints, is now adding new facilities to benefit from the rising demand.
Crude prices reached a record $147.27 a barrel on July 11, fuelling the demand to explore untapped reserves that mainly lie in deep water offshore fields.
This, in the last three years, has resulted in near three-fold increase in the charter rates for offshore rigs to about $3,00,000-$5,00,000 a day.
“We expect turnover in excess of Rs 2,500 crore by 2011-12,” said P C Kapoor, managing director, Bharti Shipyard. The company reported net sales of Rs 701.7 crore for the year ended March 2008.
The company is making the country’s first offshore rig at its new yard in Dabhol and is also setting up another yard in Mangalore. Both these yards would be focused on fulfilling the offshore requirements such as vessels and rigs.
The company expects more than 80 per cent of its revenues to come from offshore products once all its expansions are completed by December 2010. The company has other yards at Ratnagiri, Ghodbunder, Kolkata and Goa where the modernisation and expansion works are under process.
“Higher offshore work would mean higher margin as the work requires more sophistication,” said Kapoor. However, he did not quantify the margin increase in absolute terms.
The company reported 15.3 per cent rise in net profit margin at Rs 107.45 crore in 2007-08. Its operating profit margin for the period was 24.2 per cent. The company currently has an order book of Rs 4,800 crore.
