KOLKATA: Cement major Birla Corporation Ltd announced a sharp jump in its consolidated net profit to Rs 193 crore, up by 127 per cent, for the quarter ended March 2024. Lower power and fuel costs mitigated the benign price of the construction material during the quarter due to unusually weak market conditions, the company said.
Consolidated revenue for the fourth quarter of the 2023-24 fiscal stood at Rs 2,682 crore, marking a 6.8 per cent growth over the same period last year.
Realisation from cement in the March quarter fell marginally by 1.6 per cent year-on-year to Rs 5,178 per tonne.
Birla Corporation, in a statement, mentioned that after a steady ramping up of the Mukutban unit in Maharashtra, its cement division, achieved capacity utilisation of 97 per cent for the March quarter.
Cement prices remained weak through the last two quarters owing to multiple factors and disruptions such as Assembly elections in key geographies, officials said.
The company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, RCCPL Private Ltd, approved an investment of Rs 425 crore to augment the capacity of its Kundanganj unit by 1.4 million tonnes within two years.
“A third of the proposed investment will come from internal accruals. As cement consumption in India continues to grow, Birla Corporation is rolling out its next phase of capacity addition to increase cement production to 25 million tonnes by fiscal 2026-27,” chairman Harsh Vardhan Lodha said.
“The investment in capacity-building across functional verticals is reflected in the impressive ramp-up of the Mukutban unit, ahead of the guidance given by the company,” he added, stating that the company achieved an overall improvement in performance in 2023-24.