Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd. will focus on its home paints segment this financial year. The business, also known as the decorative paints vertical, has been growing at a healthy pace for the company, and saw a volume growth of 18 percent in the January-March quarter.
The bottomline fell by more than 80 percent from the same period last year, but that was, in part, due to an exceptional gain of over Rs 600 crore in the last quarter of financial year 2015-16.
The decorative paints segment drove the company's volume growth higher, said HM Bharuka, the managing director of the company. Automobile companies are Kansai Nerolac's biggest industrial clients and Bharuka told BloombergQuint that most of them are still recovering from the impact of demonetisation.
It is recovering slowly (vehicle sales), but it continues to have a negative growth. We don't expect first six months to be very good for two-wheelers.HM Bharuka, Managing Director, Kansai Nerolac Paints
The company which had hiked prices by 2.5 percent in March, is looking to pass on higher raw material costs to consumers. The paint maker will hike prices again in May, said Bharuka. Its easier to increase prices in the home paints segment, he added, as industrial clients tend to bargain more on any price hike.
Overall costs have gone up by 12-13 percent in the last two to three months, said Bharuka. The company also reported an eight percent rise in raw material costs in the last quarter of financial year 2016-17.
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