Balmer to retain its UK subsidiary

Diversified public sector conglomerate Balmer Lawrie & Company (BLC) Limited will retain its UK subsidiary, which was engaged in leasing and hiring marine freight containers before being sold off to TAL International Container Corporation of USA in July this year.

The company will look for other lines of business for Balmer Lawrie UK, a fully-owned subsidiary of BLC. "Retaining the subsidiary would help in our overseas operations.

"We would focus on speciality containers here in India through our logistics subsidiary Transafe Services Limited," said V Narayan Sharma, director, BLC. Sharma also said the company was open to overseas acquisitions to add a new line of business.

BLC has only Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) cash surplus on its balance sheets, and may have to go for debt to fund an acquistion.

BLUK's fleet of containers were managed by TAL since inception through two lease management agreements, both of which expired a few years back. TAL then offered to buy the entire BLUK fleet this year.

Meanwhile, BLC also decided to restructure its container leasing business and BLUK's operations were then transferred to TSL.

TSL, at the same time, restructured its businesses into

four strategic business units, and its container leasing operations now come under Indian Container Leasing. Other SBUs include Glacio Cold Chain Logistics, Indo-Trailer Logistics and Creative Containers.

BLUK had a turnover of Rs 17.26 crore (Rs 172.6 million) in FY08, up from Rs 4.63 crore (Rs 46.3 million) in FY07, while its profits surged 117 per cent to Rs 9.45 crore (Rs 94.5 million) during the same period.

This apart, BLC commissioned a loop barrel manufacturing facility at its Asaoti plant in Haryana last month. It started manufacturing bitumen barrels at that facility last year. It invested around Rs 15 crore (Rs 150 million) on the facility that can manufacture 900,000 barrels a year working one shift.

"There is a huge market for barrels in North India as they are used in lubricants, fruits, agro-chemicals and paints industries," said S K Mukherjee, managing director, BLC. BLC had to close its bitumen barrel manufacturing facility at Mathura that produced for captive use by the Indian Oil Corporation's Mathura refinery after IOC needed the land back for refinery expansion.

Mukherjee also clarified that the company's talks for prospective acquisitions in the travel and tourism space had fallen through.