MD & CEO's Message

With the business environment steadily improving and an expectation of recovery by the last quarter of CY 2021 to pre-COVID levels, we remain watchful of any surges of Covid-19.

Our three verticals of Performance Materials, Nutrition Sciences and Agri Sciences are well positioned to deliver robust performance and accelerate the transformation of the Company along the vectors of sustainability and good health.

Dear Shareholders,

At the outset, I hope you and your family are safe. This has been a very challenging year for all of us and our resilience has been tested like never before. I must begin by thanking all our stakeholders, i.e. employees, customers, business partners and investors for their continued support. The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to newer ways of doing business and accelerated the pace of digitalisation, with an increased focus on sustainability and resilience. In this context, keeping employees safe, ensuring agile servicing of customer demand and robust operating cash flows were the three key priorities we set for ourselves for FY 2020-21.

Guided by Tata Group’s values, we increased our efforts to support the communities we serve through an isolation ward at Mithapur Hospital, providing livelihood opportunities at our manufacturing facilities, distributing essentials and food kits, producing and distributing sanitisers and sodium hypochlorite as part of our relief programme.

Resilience in a challenging environment

In the Performance Materials vertical, Soda Ash witnessed lower demand across key application sectors in FY 2020-21. The US business was most affected, with reduced exports and a sharp decline in prices. Demand revival is anticipated across all units in FY 2021-22, which will allow us to improve our financial performance.

In the Nutrition Sciences vertical, Sodium Bicarbonate and Salt saw stable demand while the fermentation platform has a promising outlook, gaining customer traction with our prebiotic products and customised solutions, which we expect to expand further by adding new customers. The Agri Sciences vertical under Rallis delivered an encouraging performance and growth. Prioritising safety of teams and agility in fulfilling customer demand despite supply chain bottlenecks were the key elements of resilience in this challenging environment. Overall, the outlook is positive with markets recovering and investments being made across our businesses.

Our financial performance reflected the challenging market conditions. The consolidated revenue for the year was ₹10,200 crore, EBITDA ₹1,501 crore and PAT ₹436 crore. Our focus was on ensuring robust cash flows from operations which were ₹2,037 crore on a consolidated basis.

Responsibility for a better world

In line with our commitment towards sustainability, we are committed to Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reduce our CO2 emissions. Our Carbon Capture Unit in the UK is nearing completion and is one of the notable examples of pathways to ensure we meet our sustainability targets. Another area of focus is digitalisation to become a more customer-centric, service-oriented and data-driven organisation which will enable us to create more resource-efficient, safer and smart factories alongside modernising our ERP and data analytics platform. Our Nellore Fermentation Prebiotics unit leverages both these elements of sustainability and digitalisation.

Outlook

With the business environment steadily improving and an expectation of recovery by the last quarter of CY 2021 to pre-COVID levels, we remain watchful of any surges of COVID-19. Our three verticals of Performance Materials, Nutrition Sciences and Agri Sciences are well positioned to deliver robust performance and accelerate the transformation of the Company along the vectors of sustainability and good health.

I thank all our shareholders for continued guidance and support on our way forward as a focussed science based chemistry solutions enterprise.

Warm regards

R. Mukundan

Managing Director & CEO