HLL to phase out a few toothpaste and detergent brands
Mumbai: In what is probably part of its declared strategy to focus on thirty out of 110 brands, Hindustan Lever has started phasing out operations on some of its low performing brands.
Thus toothpaste brands such as Close-Up Oxyfresh and Close-Up Renew will be withdrawn while in detergents, washing machine powder Revel will be off the shelves.
Sources at HLL confirmed that Close-Up Oxyfresh was taken off the shelves a month ago, but denied the phasing out of the other two brands.
Dealers of HLL products say that stocks of Revel detergent have not been supplied for more than thee months now and Close-up Renew stocks are also not regular.
HLL’s strategy spelt out by chairman M S Banga, involves focusing managerial resources and adspend on brands, which contribute a large chunk of the company’s turnover and profits.
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Tata Steel to retire Rs 600 crore debt, plans buyback
Mumbai: Tata Steel is planning to repay debts to the tune of Rs 600 crore over the next four years.
According to RC Nandrajog, vice-president, finance, Tata Steel, after the debt repayment, the company might also consider a buyback of shares. The company has planned to invest Rs 500 crore this fiscal.
Besides, this, the company plans to repay Rs 500 crore of deep discount bonds this fiscal. These ‘Trust Bonds,’ as they were branded, carry a 17 per cent coupon rate, significantly higher than what the company now pays for new loans.
The company is planning to exercise the call option in October this year. Internal cash generation apart, the company may also issue debentures to generate funds.
Considering the favourable internal cash generation the company has investment options such as overseas acquisitions and some diversification, according to Nandrajog.
He declined to elaborate on the overseas acquisitions the company was planning. Tata Steel recently dropped a plan to acquire a company in Thailand.
Regarding diversification, Nandrajog said investors needed to be convinced that Tata Steel had the ability to ensure a healthy shareholder value post-diversification.
The other areas of expenditure would be increasing the capacity of one blast furnace from 0.6 million tonne to 1 million tonne.
The west Bokaro collieries are almost exhausted and fresh investments are required to ensure regular supply of good quality coking coal. "We are looking at new mines," he added.
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Tata Steel gets patent for blast furnace performance enhancer
Jamshedpur: Tata Steel and BetzDearborn, makers of speciality chemical solutions for water and industrial process systems, have obtained an international patent issued by the US Patent Office for a blast furnace performance enhancer (BFPE), they jointly developed together a few years ago. The use of the product helps to save on fuel cost for running blast furnaces.
At a function here late Thursday evening, BetzDearborn’s vice-president, Asia-Pacific, Mr Patrick M Houstan, handed over the two patent accreditation plaques to Mr Santanu Ghosh, AGM (blast furnace), and Mr Indronil Sengupta, ADM (strategy), the two Tata Steel officers responsible for the discovery of BFPE.
The patent describes the discovery as a "method of adding coal combustion enhancer to blast furnace."
Mr Houstan said although BetzDearborn had around 1,500 patents in its name, "it shared a relatively small number of patent with industry and this one was certainly the only one so far from the Asia Pacific region."
Tata Steel will receive a portion of the royalty, for use of the patent by any steel plant in the world.
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United Breweries to dilute stake in S African venture
Mumbai: United Breweries is looking at the possibility of diluting its holding in a South African brewery company, United National Breweries, by either partial sale to an interested company or by going in for a listing on the Johannesberg Stock Exchange.
At present, UB holds around 30 per cent stake and enjoys 50 per cent of the management board. On the group’s flagship spirit company McDowell, UB Group president & chief financial officer, Ravi Nedungadi, said: "The company has already completed corporate restructuring. We have adopted all the international standards of reporting and accounting. At some point of time in the future, it will be appropriate for McDowell to raise foreign currency and funding, if it has to go in for foreign acquisition. The company is going to unfold a new balance sheet for the financial year ending March 2001."

Earlier, the UB group has announced plans to offload 26 per cent stake to a strategic investor. Belgian brewery major Interbrew, Carlsberg and Heineken had evinced interest to pick up the stake earlier.
The company had also earlier stated that it is talks with many international beer brand owners but not necessarily with the intention to forge a joint venture. In the post -WTO period, UB plans licence agreements with a few global beer businesses only to market their brands in India, an official had said.
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BSES data centre to offer ASP and video-on-demand
Mumbai: BSES Telecom, is planning to offer value added services in multimedia, apart from offering pure data access and storage services for its data centre customers. BSES Telecom is a completely owned subsidiary of the Mumbai-based power transmission and distribution company
Investing approximately Rs 10 crores into the project BSES will provide services such as video-on-demand, online games and webcast of live events, apart than offering web hosting, co-hosting and database administration services from its 6000 sq ft data centre in Mumbai.
The company intends to launch the first part ASP (Application Service Provider) services that will allow secondary school teachers and students, free access to education software.
According to sources in the company, initially BSES Telecom will offer library management software that will be available as a part of the company’s ASP service free of cost after the launch and depending on the response received the company will make ‘inventory management’ software and ‘random paper setting’ software available to the teaching community.
BSES Telecom is also in talks with several educationists and universities such as SNDT University, across the country for software development. The services however will be made available to users within the next 3-6 months.
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Bharti to introduce cellphones in India
New Delhi: Now the Bhartis will have a presence in cellular handsets also. Bharti Teletech is planning to enter the cellular handsets market by the middle of 2001 by introducing cellular phones under its Beetel brand. For this the company has started negotiations for a tie-up with a few foreign cellphone manufacturers.

Rakesh Bharti Mittal, managing director of Bharti Teletech, said, "We are planning to introduce cellular phones in India. The phones sourced from foreign manufacturers would be sold under Bharti brandname,""
The phones are likely to be introduced in the Indian markets by the middle of this year.
The company currently manufactures fixed line phones under the Beetles brandname.
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Aventis Pharma acquires 50.10 percent equity of Hoechst Marion
New Delhi: Aventis Pharma holding GMBH has acquired 50.10 per cent equity totalling 11,538,342 equity shares of Hoechst Marion Roussel from its parent company Hoechst AG of Germany.

The acquisition was made on March 30, 2001, Hoechst Marion Roussel informed the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday.
HMRL said that the mode of acquisition was through a private arrangement from holding company to wholly owned subsidiary.
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Bhel ties up with Max Control Systems for technology
Bangalore: Bhel's electronics division has entered into a technical tie-up with Max Control Systems, USA, for using its new generation distributed control system Max1000+plus.
Bhel is the market leader in power plant control and instrumentation in the country.
Max Control Systems’ technology offers fast response time, higher efficiency, reliability and safer plant operation.
According to senior officials in Bhel, the acquisition of this technology is likely to further strengthen Bhel's position, both in power plant and industrial process control market.

The new control system will be installed in upcoming power projects in the country.
Bhel is expanding its existing businesses by acquiring new cutting edge technologies /upgrading existing technologies, reducing cost and cycle time, besides diversifying into new product segments.
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Bharat Petroleum granted license by TERI to make Oilzapper
Bangalore: The Tata Energy Research Institute, has granted licence to public sector petroleum major, Bharat Petroleum Corporation to produce oil-eating microbes — Oilzapper to eliminate oil sludge in its refineries.
The Oilzapper technology has been developed by TERI with active support of the Central government’s department of biotechnology.
The Oil Zapper technology has come as a boon at a time when disposal of oil sludge has become an issue of major concern for oil refineries around the world.

Huge areas are required for dumping the sludge, which gradually affects the ground water and soil fertility. The country at present has 15 grass root oil refineries spread across length and breadth that generate huge quantities of oily sludge annually.
Oilzapper also cuts down the cost of disposal of waste. Refineries spend Rs 3000 per tonne annually on an average to construct landfills for dumping oil wastes. Oilzapper can do the same job at around Rs 600 per tonne. Further it cuts down on transportation cost as the sludge can now be treated close to the refinery, thus obviating the need for transportation to a different site for dumping. The land later is restored to its original, arable form.At present this technology is used in eight refineries in India, seven operated by the Indian Oil Corporation and the remaining by BPCL.
Besides the IOC, all the oil majors in India including OIL India, ONGC, Reliance, IPCL, HPCL apply this technology.
So far 8,000 MT of oil sludge has been treated with Oilzapper. Countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia and Kuwait have shown interest in using Oilzapper.
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Morepen to phase out bulk drugs business
New Delhi: Morepen Laboratories Ltd is altering its business portfolio by phasing out its domestic bulk drugs business over the next five years.According to Sushil Suri, chairman, Morepen Laboratories, the company intends to reduce the presence of bulk drugs in its portfolio from 74 per cent at present to 26 per cent by 2005-06. There too, it will do only international generic business and not domestic bulk drugs.

Instead, of bulk drugs the pharmaceutical major wants to go in for branded formulations in a big way. The contribution of this is thus expected to go up from 25 per cent to 75 per cent in its product portfolio in the next five years.
By 2005-06, Suri expects formulation sales to consist mainly of branded formulations.The company has thus lined up 66 new branded formulations for launch during the current fiscal. At present, Morepen has 32 such products in the market and has rolled out 18 more of such products this month.
The focus areas of the formulations market identified by the company are dermatology, respiratory tract infection, gastroenterology, neuropsychiatrics, cardiac, diabetics and gynaecology.
Suri expects the latest products to boost sales of branded formulations from Rs 22 crore in 2000-01 to at least Rs 60 crore this financial year.
According to Suri, while the profit margin on bulk drugs in 12-13 per cent, that on branded formulations is as high as 18-19 per cent.
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