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| PRESS RELEASES |
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Hanil Era Textiles signs agreement with GAIL for supply of Gas
Labour agreement also signed for 3 years
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| Mumbai, March 29, 2005: Hanil Era Textiles Ltd., a 100% EOU based out of Patalganga in Maharashtra and the largest acrylic yarn exporter in the country, has signed an agreement with GAIL (India) Ltd. wherein the latter would commence supply of natural gas to the former from 2006. Vishesh Agarwal, CEO, Hanil Era Textiles and P K Gupta, Zonal General Manager, Mumbai Zonal Office, GAIL signed the agreement. |
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| After signing the agreement, Vishesh Agarwal said, “We are very pleased with the signing of the natural gas supply agreement with GAIL. This supply will enable us to bring down our fuel costs by roughly 33%. We use Furnace Oil currently, which is consumed by our 16.5 MW power plant and boilers for our energy needs.” |
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Besides this agreement with GAIL, Hanil Era has also signed a wage agreement with its workforce for a period of three years. “This wage agreement will ensure that the workforce is more committed towards production and capacity utilisation. We expect a sharp increase in the efficiency of our operations in return for the 5-6% rise in wage bills that we will incur. This will have a long-term positive impact on the performance of Hanil Era,” says R K Agarwal, Chairman. |
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| Hanil Era has a capacity to produce 1,200-1,250 tonnes of yarn per month. It reported a net profit of Rs 7.06 crore in Q3 of FY05 while sales have shown an increase of 21.72% in Q3, from Rs 30.57 crore in the 3-month period ended December 2003 to Rs 37.21 crore in the 3-month period ended December 2004. Hanil Era has now become a zero-debt company, except for the export bill discounting limits that it enjoys with a few banks. For the nine-month period ended December 2004, Hanil Era has reported sales of Rs 90.37 crore and a net profit of Rs 15.39 crore. |
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| Post MFTA (Multi-Fibre Trade Agreement) regime, Hanil Era is all geared up to exploit the best possible from its existing facilities as well as set up new facilities to become self-dependent in providing higher value added products. Moving on these lines, it has embarked upon a modernisation-cum-expansion programme. While it has been a yarn manufacturer till now, the company is now undertaking a project to add weaving and processing capacity at its existing facilities at Patalganga by setting up 72 looms. “This project is on stream and Phase I is expected to start operations by the end of June 2005,” says Vishesh Agarwal. |
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| As a diversification, before taking up the expansion project, in October 2004, Hanil Era had set up a 200 KL/day ethanol plant. This makes it the largest ethanol manufacturer in the country. “The recent statement of Union Minister of Petroleum Mani Shankar Aiyar asking petroleum marketing companies to kickstart the virtually comatose bio-fuel programme by processing all pending ethanol tenders within the next three weeks bodes well for companies such as ours. The Centre had made 5% ethanol blending mandatory in petrol in nine States and three Union Territories three years ago. The tenders for supply will be finalised in the next three months. Hanil Era being the largest producer of Ethanol in the country and having submitted a tender for Rs 300 crore, we will be the biggest beneficiary,” says Vishesh Agarwal. |
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| Ethanol producers are now reassured that the government is committed long term to the much-touted gasohol-blending programme. The Indian Sugar Mills Association has been identified as the nodal institution for formulating the action plan for promoting ethanol as a mixed fuel. In fact, the Union Petroleum Minister has also discussed the possibility of signing a tripartite agreement between the Centre, the States and the sugar industry to get a long-term fix on bio fuels. |
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| About Hanil Era Textiles Ltd |
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| Established in 1992, Hanil Era Textiles Ltd. (BSE Code: 500177) is a 100% EOU that was floated as a JV between New Era Fabrics Ltd. of Matunga (Mumbai) and Hanil Synthetics Fibre Company Ltd. of South Korea. The company went public with a NCD issue in 1993. Hanil Era has a yarn manufacturing capacity at Patalganga in Maharashtra, where it makes worsted, cotton and blended yarn with a total spindelage of 80,000. It has its own power generation unit with a capacity of 16.5 MW and it supplies excess power to neighbouring corporates via the MSEB grid. It has recently set up an ethanol dehydrator with a capacity of 200 KL/day to supply pure ethanol to chemical units and oil companies. It is now implementing a modernisation-cum-expansion programme costing Rs 50 crore. The two-phase expansion exercise is for adding 72 looms to make grey fabrics, bedsheets, curtains and terry towels. |
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