India Foils Reserves & Surplus Up Rs 38 Crore

The reserves and surplus of India Foils Ltd, a Williamson Magor group company, have increased by Rs 38 crore to Rs 130 crore from Rs 92 crore, pursuant to the scheme of amalgamation of Light Metal Industries Ltd with the company.

The scheme of amalgamation received the high court sanction in March this year. During 1997-98, the loan funds of India Foils increased to Rs 285 crore from Rs 245 crore in 1996-97. The secured loans of the company rose to Rs 220 crore from Rs 181 crore in the previous year.

With a high interest cost of Rs 37 crore and a depreciation charge of Rs 14 crore, the company has given loans to companies amounting to Rs 26 crore during the year under review.

India Foils has kept in abeyance the implementation of its intermediary rolling mill project due to depressed market conditions. The project which envisages to augment the capacity of foilstock manufacturing at the Hoera factory, will be taken up during the later part of the financial year. Installation of strip flatness control (SFC) for the foil rolling mill at Hoera was deferred till the full optimisation of the new rolling mill at Kamarhati since the implementation of SFCwould involve shutdown of the Hoera rolling mill for the next two months.

The capital-work-in progress of Rs 9.5 crore pertaining to the rolling mill project in Hoera mainly comprises plant and machinery cost of Rs 8.47 crore. However, India Foils' plant at Kamarhati was optimised during 1997-98.

The mill has achieved production close to 90 per cent of its optimised level and produced 4,350 tonne of high quality foils, while the old unit at Kamarhati has produced around Rs 7,876 tonne of finished material. According to the company's annual report for 1997-98, the year under review was a difficult period for the company. The over-capacity in the foil industry coupled with increasing imports from south-east Asia due to the low import duty of 20 per cent resulted in sharper price competition and price erosion.

With a net loss of Rs 3.88 crore, the company posted sales of Rs 319 crore as against Rs 309 crore in the previous year. The directors have recommended a dividend of 5 per cent.