The fully-owned German branch of Hindusthan National Glass & Industries Ltd.’s (HNG) is expected to be back in black this fiscal after investments to remove bottlenecks and improve operational efficiencies. The company also streamlined logistics handling operations by moving warehouses from rented premises to company-owned facilities, closer to the factory, also focussing on reducing contingencies such as hotel bills and transportation.
Hindusthan National Glass & Industries Ltd’s (HNG) expects its fully-owned German branch, Agenda Glas – now renamed HNG Global – to break even this fiscal, and is also looking forward to enhancing capacity.
The Kolkata-headquartered container glassmaker acquired Agenda Glas for EUR 40 million in 2011.
According to HNG’s senior vice-president and chief financial officer, Laxmi Narayan Mandhana, an additional EUR 12 million was invested to remove bottlenecks and improve operational efficiencies at the German unit.
“Following additional investments and improvement in operational efficiencies, we are hoping the German unit will break even by the end of this fiscal,” Mandhana said.
According to Mandhana, increasing production and reducing the reject ratio was high on the agenda of the new HNG-led management. After the takeover, in fact, HNG reduced rejects from as much as 40% to 23-24%, and, according to Mandhana, the aim is to restrict damages within 10%.
The company also streamlined logistics handling operations by moving warehouses from rented premises to company-owned facilities, closer to the factory, also focussing on reducing contingencies such as hotel bills and transportation.
“The existing plant has a 320-tonnes-per-day furnace. We might add one more furnace of similar capacity at the existing location at an expected cost of around EUR 55 million,” he said.