GHCL Limited is among one of India's leading manufacturers of Soda Ash (Anhydrous Sodium Carbonate). It manufacture 60,000 MTPA of refined Sodium bicarbonate or Baking Soda, which is marketed under brand name - LION. It finds application as a food additive, animal nutritive, plating and dyeing agent. It has captive limestone mines at Sutrapada, Veraval and Talala Taluka in Gujarat. These mines produce an average of 45 MTPD to 500 MTPD of chemical grade limestone through semi-mechanized mining technologies.
GHCL LTD (formerly Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Limited) was promoted in October 14th, 1983 in the joint sector by the GIIC and the Dalmias, through their companies - GTC Industries and Dalmia Dairy Corporation. The Company is engaged in primarily two business segments consisting of Inorganic Chemicals (mainly manufacture and sale of Soda Ash) and Home Textile division (comprising of yarn manufacturing, weaving, processing and cutting & sewing of home textiles products). The company also has presence in edible salt. GHCL is a leading Indian producer of soda ash. The company supplies soda ash to Hindustan Unilever Limited, Ghari Group, P&G, Patanjali Ayurved Limited, Fena Group, HNG Group, Gujarat Guardian Limited, Gujarat Borosil Limited, Piramal Glass Limited, Gold Plus Glass Industries Limited and Phillips among others. The company's Soda Ash plant has a capacity of 9.75 lacs tpa.
GHCL has integrated textile manufacturing facilities centring around Spinning on one hand with 1.76 Lakh spindles and 3320 rotors and Home Textiles (Weaving, Processing and Cut & Sew of Bed Textiles) on the other. Its state-of-the art Home Textiles facility in Vapi, Gujarat comprises of 190 Air Jet looms, 45 million meter of wide width processing capacity, 12 million meter of weaving capacity and 30 million meter of cut & sew. Home textile products of the company are primarily exported worldwide and some of the company's valued customers include Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl's, J C Penney, TJX Group, QVC, Casper, Gerber, Burts Bees, Revman International and CHF Industries in the United States, Hudson Bay in Canada, House of Fraser, The White Company and Miles Home Fashions in the UK and Myers, Pillow Talk and Canningvale in Australia.
GHCL set up a 1200-tpd plant to manufacture soda ash (both dense and Light), at Veraval, Gujarat, based on the technology provided by AKZO Noble BV, Netherlands. Soda ash is a base alkali widely used in the manufacture of detergents, glass, sodium silicate, dyes and intermediates, paper etc. The company's soda ash manufacturing unit has obtained ISO 14001 and ISO 9002 certification awarded by Det Norske Veritas India in the year 2002-03, which is valid for three years. The company has salt refineries at Nagapattinam and Thiruporur in TamilNadu. Further the company has its textiles units at Madurai and Manaparai in TamilNadu and Valsad in Gujarat.
The company came out with a public issue in Aug.'87 to part-finance the project.
In 1998-99, it acquired two salt refinery plants from DCW Home Products LTDone at Thiruporur near Madras and the other at Palghar, Maharashtra havinga production capacity of 1 lac tonne each per annum.
GHCL entered into IT enabled services through wholly owned subsidiary, Icon Data management Ltd. (IDML) in the year 2000-2001. Icon Data Management LTD was amalgamated with the company with prior approval from High Court of Gujarat in 2003. Consequent to this amalgamation, M/s Colwell & Salmon Communications Inc. USA has become a direct subsidiary of the company. Further the company has acquired the entire equity capital of M/s. Colwell & Salmon Communications India Ltd comprising of 50,500 equity shares of Rs.10 each, thereby making it a wholly owned subsidiary of GHCL. BIFR has approved the scheme of amalgamation of Sree Meenakshi Mills Ltd with GHCL w.e.f April, 2001.
The name of the company was changed from Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd to GHCL Ltd with effect from 21st November 2003.
The company has completed its first phase of modernization at Paravai in the year 2002-03. In the year 2004-05 the company has completed the third phase of modernization at Paravai and the fourth phase, which includes additional 10000 spindles is also expected to be completed by December 2005.
During 2004-05 the company has augmented its installed capacity of Soda Ash and Yarn- Spindles by 75000 MT and 3236 Nos respectively. With this expansion the total installed capacity has mounted to 600000 MT and 64268 Nos respectively. Further the company has installed a new capacity of Detergent with a capacity of 24000 MT and Wind Turbine Generators with 8.40 MW per hour.
During the financial year ended 31 March 2014, GHCL achieved highest domestic sales of Soda Ash i.e. 6.44 lacs MT and total sales of Soda Ash is 6.71 lacs MT including exports.
The company's textiles division implemented new coal based steam boiler to control the gas price impact in October 2013.
During the year, GHCL's non-operating subsidiaries namely Colwell & Salmon Communications Inc. and Rosebys uK Limited were voluntarily dissolved. Another subsidiary of the company namely Teliforce Holding India Ltd. has been put for voluntary liquidation on January 29, 2014.
During the financial year ended 31 March 2015, GHCL achieved highest domestic sales of Soda Ash i.e. 6.74 lacs MT against 6.44 lacs MT in previous year and total sales of Soda Ash is 6.86 lacs MT including exports against 6.71 lacs MT in previous year.
Rosebys Interiors India Limited (RIIL), a subsidiary of the company, is under liquidation with effect from 15 July 2014. Another subsidiary of the company namely Indian England NV has been put under voluntary liquidation on March 10, 2015. During the year, GHCL's non-operating step down subsidiary namely Indian Wales NV was voluntarily dissolved.
During the financial year 31 March 2016, GHCL made the highest ever production of 7.49 lac tons and the highest sale of 7.01 lac tons of Soda Ash.
During the year 2015-16, GHCL embarked upon Soda Ash Expansion program at the project cost of Rs 375 crore. The company successfully tied up Term Loan for Rs 275 crore for a period of 10 years including moratorium period of 2 years at an average interest rate of 11.25% p.a.
During the year, non-operating subsidiaries of the company namely Teliforce Holding India Ltd. has been voluntarily dissolved with effect from April 28, 2015 and Indian England NV has been liquidated with effect from August 14, 2015.
During the year ended 31 March 2017, GHCL achieved highest domestic sales of Soda Ash i.e. 7.40 lacs tons. During the year under review, GHCL completed Soda Ash Expansion program at the project cost of Rs. 375 crore.GHCL's new edible salt plant at Thiruporur became operational during March 2017 with a capacity of approximately1 lacs metric tons per annum.
During the year under review, GHCL's Consumer Products Division (CPD) launched i-FLO spices (in sachets) and i-FLO Spices Combo in the market.During the year under review, GHCL successfully converted some of high cost Rupee term loans carrying interest rate at 12.50% p.a. into Foreign Currency Loan at an average rate of 4.40% with average maturity of 3 to 4 years.
During the year ended 31 March 2018, GHCL achieved highest domestic sales of Soda Ash i.e. 8.47 lacs tons.
GHCL has doubled the capacity of Bi-Carbonate to 60000 MTPA which has been completed in January 2018.
The company's Consumer Products Division (CPD) ventured into the Premium Honey Category by pioneering the entry of Jujube Honey into Indian market shelves as i-FLO Indian Jujube Honey. Under powdered spices category, Turmeric, Chilli, Coriander & Black Pepper Powder SKUs were introduced.
The Board of Directors of GHCL Limited in their meeting held on January 31, 2017 had given their approval for Buy Back of the company's fully paid-up equity shares of Rs. 10/- each from the Open Market through Stock Exchange route, at a Maximum Buyback price of Rs. 315/- per Equity Share excluding transaction costs, for an aggregate amount of Rs. 80 crores. In line with the said approval, since starting of buyback process, the company had bought back 31,56,000 equity shares and extinguished the same. Out of which 5,73,438 equity shares were bought back and 546,550 equity shares were extinguished in Financial Year 2016-17 and balance 25,82,562 equity shares were bought back and 26,09,450 equity shares were extinguished during financial year 2017-18. The highest and lowest price at which equity shares were bought back was Rs. 277 and Rs. 233.50 per equity share respectively. The average price (excluding brokerage and other charges) at which the equity shares have been bought back is Rs. 252.04 per equity share and the total amount deployed in the Buyback is Rs. 79.54 crores, which represents 99.43% of the Maximum Buyback Offer Size (excluding transaction cost)
During the financial year ended 31 March 2018, GHCL successfully converted some of high cost Rupee term loans carrying interest rate at 10% p.a. into Foreign Currency Loan at an average rate of 3.8%.
Due to efficient cash flow management and timely repayment of interest and principal to various banks, CARE (Credit Analysis & Research Ltd) has upgraded rating from CARE A- to CARE A for long term facilities and from CARE A2+ to CARE A1 for short term facilities of the company.
During the year, the company completed its Brownfield Soda Ash capacity expansion and the current capacity at its Soda Ash plant stood at 1.10 Million tons as at March 31, 2019.
During the financial year 2018-19, the company produced 9.72 lacs tons soda ash. The Company also achieved highest domestic sales i.e. 8.82 lacs tons and total sales of Soda Ash is 8.93 lacs tons including exports.
In March 2019, Company has launched a unique brand of bedding that promotes 'health and wellness', called MEDITASI. It also launched a traceable Egyptian Cotton called 'Nile Harvest'.
The Board of Directors of the Company at their meeting held on March 16, 2020 had approved a Scheme of Arrangement u/s 230-232 of the Companies Act 2013, involving demerger of Textiles Businesses of the Company into a separate company (i.e. Resulting Company). Accordingly, the Resulting Company was incorporated on June 17, 2020 with name of GHCL Textiles Limited as a wholly owned subsidiary of the company.
With the approval of the Board of Directors of the Company in their meeting held on December 06, 2021, Company entered into a Business Transfer Agreement (BTA) for transfer of its Home Textiles Business (located at Vapi, Gujarat) (HT Business) to Indo Count Industries
Limited (ICIL) by way of a slump sale. Said transfer of HT Business had also been approved by Shareholders of the Company by way of special resolution on January 21, 2022 and the transfer of HT Business was completed on April 2, 2022.
Further, in view of the divestment of HT Business of the Company to ICIL pursuant to BTA, the Board of Directors of the Company, at their meeting held on December 6, 2021 had approved withdrawal of the then existing Scheme of Arrangement u/s 230-232 of the Companies Act 2013, involving demerger of its entire Textiles business into GHCL Textiles Limited (Old Scheme) and correspondingly approved a fresh Scheme of Arrangement consisting of demerger of Spinning Division of GHCL Limited (Demerged Company) into GHCL Textiles Limited (Resulting Company). Subsequently, on December 20, 2021, Hon'ble NCLT (Ahmedabad Bench) allowed the withdrawal petition. Further,
the Company has received requisite approvals / NOC from the Stock Exchanges (NSE & BSE) and CCI on its new Scheme. As per the new Scheme, the equity shares held by GHCL Limited in GHCL Textiles Limited shall be cancelled. Further, the Resulting Company's shareholding pattern will mirror the shareholding pattern of the Demerged Company post Scheme. Also, shares of Resulting Company shall be listed on the Stock Exchanges. Hence post completion of Demerger, there will be two listed entities i.e. GHCL Limited (Chemical business) and GHCL Textiles Limited (Spinning business).