India Cements to restructure non-core assets

India Cements has said it will restructure its non-core assets, enabling the company to focus on core areas of its business and increase profitability.

The company is expected to announce businesses in which it wants to partially or fully exit when it announces its quarterly results later this year. “We are working on whether to merge, hive-off or to sell to make all these businesses profitable and if we can grow independently,” N Srinivasan, vice-chairman and managing director, said.

It has ruled out selling its cement assets, stating these are “not for sale.” However, it is planning to merge Trinetra Cements Ltd, a subsidiary with a capacity of 1.5Mta at Rajasthan, and also looking at hiving off its infrastructure business into a separate entity.

India Cements said its capacity utilisation had increased to 77 per cent in June from 67 per cent a few months ago on the back of increase in demand and rising cement prices. However, according to Srinivasan, the increase has not been enough to compensate the increase in input costs. The company hopes to bring down the costs substantially with the launch of its 50MW captive power plant at Vishnupuram unit in Andhra Pradesh.

India Cements has nine subsidiaries, including ICL Financial Services, Industrial Chemicals and Monomers Ltd and ICL Securities.