Britannia Industries on Monday said that it was likely to bring on stream its biscuit manufacturing unit at Gujarat within the next quarter.
Addressing a press conference here, Vinita Bali, Managing Director, “The Gujarat unit is expected to be on stream within the next two to three months”. She declined to give the investment figure saying that a unit of this size usually costs around Rs.40-50 crore.
Explaining the near doubling of the standalone profit (Rs.86.3 crore) during the first quarter ended June 30, 2013, which came on the back of a 15 per cent increase in revenues (Rs.1,403.4 crore), she said that better mix management, improved cost management and structural cost changes helped improve results.
To a question, she said that prices were increased by around 8 per cent in this period.
Responding to a question why net profits were marginally lower than the fourth quarter of 2012-13, she said that this was due to the dairy business, whose growth rate was short of expectations in the first quarter of 2013-14.
On BIL monetising its land assets in Chennai and Bangalore, she said that it was not looking to sell the eight acre at the closed Chennai factory or its corporate office in Bangalore for the sake of raising funds. “It was the other way round. We closed the Chennai unit as it had become inefficient and so we may sell the land.. in the case of our Bagalore office, we now need a more modern office.. so we are relocating”.
