Balaji Distilleries Ltd. (Merged) Stock Analysis

Balaji Distilleries was incorporated in the year 1993. The company`s registered office is in Chennai and M Sreenivasulu Reddy is its chairman. The company is now merged with United Spirits, with effect from April 1, 2009.

Balaji Distilleries produces IMFL products from rectified spirit and brews beer. Within the IMFL segment, the demand is split between various products such as whiskey, brandy, rum, gin and vodka. Within the product segments, the demand is further split between premium brands, medium brands and lower-end brands, which are categorized according to the price. In terms of volume, it is brandy and the lower-end brands that sell more than the other products and premium and medium brands. The company diversified to enter into other businesses like ships and export of consumer products and computer hardware. Its plants are located at Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Nellore in Andhra Pradesh.

The company had become a sick industrial company and has been incurring losses for several years now. So, BIFR declared the company as sick as on January 4, 2007 and has appointed IDBI as the operating agency to prepare a viability study report and revival scheme for the company.

The liquor industry in the state of Tamil Nadu has been opened up with the import of IMFL and beer by TASMAC from the neighboring states, and with the issue of three new distillery licenses and one new brewery license. The company was left with no brand of its own and with the over-dependence on brands of one company, viz United Spirits Limited (USL) and United Breweries Limited (UBL), the board of directors of the company felt that it has became necessary to ward off competition. For the settlement of all secured lenders, unsecured lenders and preference share holders, the board of directors approved the merger of the company with United Spirit in the year 2009. The scheme of arrangement provides for transfer of the brewery division undertaking of Balaji Distilleries Limited to Chennai Breweries Private Limited and merger of Balaji Distilleries Limited (consisting of the distillery division undertaking and investments in subsidiaries) into United Spirits Limited on a going concern basis.The exchange ratio for equity shareholders of BDL has been approved by the board of directors of USL and BDL as two equity shares of Rs 10 each of USL for every 55 equity shares of Rs 10.

In the year 2009, the distillery unit of the company was expanded by installing nine new blending tanks of 45 KL capacity, conversion of three spirit storage tanks into blending tanks of 55 KL each, so as to increase the blending capacity by 5,70,000 bulk litres, modernized five bottling lines from 120 to 240 BPM. The company invested Rs 10 crore for the above improvements, which resulted an increase in production capacity from 6,80,600 cases per month to 9,90,000 cases per month -- the largest IMFL bottling unit in Tamil Nadu.

The brewery unit was also expanded by installing an additional brew house with 500 HL brew length, two unit tanks of 3,000 HL capacity each, filtration system of 300 HL per hour, 500 TR refrigeration plant, capacity enhancement of utilities such as air compressor, 2000 KVA diesel generator,2000 KVA electric transformer, reverse osmosis water treatment plant and upgradation of its effluent treatment plant, with total investment of Rs 45 crore. With this expansion the brewery unit could now produce 1,80,00,000 cases of beer per annum -- the largest brewery unit in Tamil Nadu.