Rossari Biotech Ltd. group Chief Financial Officer Ketan Sablok attributed the spike in exports in the first half of the current financial year to a conscious call that the company made amid softening of demand in the domestic market.
The speciality chemicals manufacturer has posted a 32% year-on-year growth in exports during the first half of ongoing fiscal.
With the growth in exports, Sablok is confident of achieving the top line growth target that he had laid out for fiscal 2025. “For FY25, we had earlier indicated that we will grow close to 12–15% levels. We have closed H1 at 11% growth. I think we will be able to end the year between 12% and 14%,” he elaborated.
Sablok told NDTV Profit that exports have been a growth driver for the company in the first half. “We have seen that the domestic market volumes are not picking up the way we wanted,” he said.
Explaining the rationale behind the exports push, the top executive said, “Given that the limitations we have on the availability of our key raw material, ethylene oxide, plus with the capacity utilisation of our ethoxylation almost peaking, it was a conscious call for us to look at the exports market to pick up the volumes that side because it is a largely untapped market for us.”
However, Sablok acknowledged that headwinds from Bangladesh in terms of textile speciality chemicals exports impacted the company's growth.
The neighbouring country has been facing macroeconomic challenges following the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the subsequent takeover by an interim government.
“But we are now seeing good order flow coming back from Bangladesh and hope that from December onwards the exports here will pick up again,” the Mumbai-headquartered company's CFO said.
Sablok said that there was a significant decline in Bangladesh exports this year, but it was not due to a dearth of orders.
“We took a conscious call not to fulfil many of these orders given the situation in banking, forex, etc," he said, adding that it was "better not to export than expose ourselves to any risks of the financial situation in Bangladesh.”
At the same time, he said that now there were a lot of positive signals coming from the market in the neighbouring country.
However, Bangladesh is not the only country that Rossari Biotech is counting on for the exports of textile chemicals. “We are looking at a lot of other geographies including Vietnam and Egypt. We have also sent our products to North Africa and Turkiye. Overall, over the next few months we will see textile bounce back from Q4,” Sablok noted.
Shares of Rossari Biotech closed Tuesday's trade 4.55% lower at Rs 792.50 apiece on the NSE against the benchmark Nifty's decline of 1.25%.
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