Sweet '17 for sugar companies

Record profit due to bumper crop in Uttar Pradesh, price spike

Vivek Saraogi, managing director of Balrampur Chini Mills, was pleasantly surprised this year (2016-17) by the strongest-ever performance of his company in the 30 years he has been in the business.

The company, with headquarters in Kolkata, has 10 mills. In the first nine months of FY17, its profits were nearly Rs 400 crore. Its earlier highest annual profit was in FY09 — Rs 226 crore. In FY16, its profit was Rs 99 crore; and in FY15, it had made a loss of Rs 58 crore.

Saraogi attributes this to a bumper sugarcane crop and sugar production in Uttar Pradesh.