HCL turnaround, earns profit, plans further growth

Kolkata, Sept 26: Public sector Hindustan Copper Limited (HCL), which has recently made a successful turnaround by earning a net profit of Rs 55.83 crores last year, has now decided to focus its attention towards development of mines to double its profit margin by March 2007.

Announcing this and other future plans of HCL, its Chairman-cum- Managing Director Satish Chandra Gupta here today said in order to further improve their business portfolios and financial condition they had chalked out a number of time bound programmes not only to revive some of the old and closed mines but also to develop new ones besides streamlining their entire activities.

Further elaborating, he said through at present HCL had only three operative copper ore mines in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh with a total reserve of a little more than 415 million tonnes of ore.

He said HCL had appointed a U.K. based consutalant-SRK Group-to prepare a comprehensive feasibility report about ther prospect of re-excavating some of the old mines in Jharkhand, including the Surda mine, which still is estimated to have a reserve of more than 26 million tonnes of ore.

This apart geologists from HCL and the SRK Group had recently discovered huge underground reserve of copper ore at Chapri Sidweswari area in Jharkhand and at Banwas region in Rajasthan, which altogether also contained huge deposits of more than 500 million tonnes of copper ore for future exploration.

Referring to the recent multiple hike of prices of different grades of copper both in the domestic and international markets creating a number of previous non-viable propositions as viable now, Mr Gupta said this had also gone a long way in encouraging the company to go for exports in a big way.

Accordingly, during last year alone HCL exported a total volume of 1402 tonnes of wire-rod to the USA and several countries in Europe, he said adding that this year they had targetted at least 50 per cent jump from that figure to earn a substantial amount from export.

Asked about his plan to raise necessary funds, required for future expansion and modernisation of all HCL mines and its plants, the CMD said of the total Rs 1,500 crores required for these purpose in another three to four years, they had planned to pool the major amount from internal resources while the rest would come from the market through public issue and government bonds.

However, the exact route of public issue was yet to be decided by the Board of directors, he informed replying to another query.

Regarding the optimal use of human resources which had already been reduced by one third through VRS and early retirement, Mr Gupta said they were now toying with idea of out-sourcing some of the mining work on contractural basis. "We are also scouting for the right company to do such jobs," the CMD informed.

UNI