Industrial Packaging to logistics company, Balmer Lawrie & Co saw revenue growth of 4 percent in the third quarter. However, profits were down substantially on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

A Ratna Sekhar, Director-HR & CA & CMD of the company said that the COVID impact on travel business and the effect of steel prices has led to lower profits.

“The COVID impact is there and the travel business is absolutely not doing anything which is incurring losses. There is also effect of steel prices and base oil prices in G&L. So, these are the factors which have contributed to the downturn towards profit,” he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

However, he expects the travel business to bounce back. “We are hopeful that travel will bounce back. The indications are there; if you compare December to January, there is a 35 percent increase in month-on-month (MoM) travel. However, corporate travel is absolutely not increasing whereas personal travel is increasing. So the outlook for the future is going to be good and we are hopeful of making break-even during the next financial year,” he said.

Sekhar said that the logistics business saw a profit Rs 52 crore this year in the services area. However, he said that in Q4 they are seeing a decrease in import volumes due to clogging at ports, but the Container Freight Station (CFS) did well during COVID and has been a saviour for the company.

He also said that they are catering to Bharat Biotech’s vaccine storage and dispatch. He added that so far they have dispatched 34 lakh units of Covaxin for Bharat Biotech.

Sekhar said that the Hyderabad temperature-controlled warehouse is doing very well and expects to complete construction of Bhubaneshwar warehouse in this quarter.

On disinvestment, he said, “We were told that we are getting evaluated for disinvestment, but there are no further updates.”

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(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)