Aarti Industries Ltd said its fourth R&D centre located at Navi Mumbai was made operational in the month of March 2020. This centre will facilitate further enhancement of company's product portfolio and also augment its reaction capabilities in other niche speciality chemical segments. Based on our R&D initiatives, we are looking to expand our portfolio into chloro-toluene products and additional downstream chemistries such as photo-chlorination, and the like. Now, with the enhancement of our R&D capabilities, we expect to enter additional new lines of chemistry and products. The focus will be on supply chains for value-added products requiring multiple levels of synthesis and completely independent of intermediate supplies from China.
During Q4FY20, the company also commissioned and commercialised the initial phase of upcoming unit / project at Dahej SEZ and had also exported few shipments to its global customers. These, and other upcoming expansions, are expected to create significant benefits as India strengthens its position and market share in global supply chains that are increasingly looking to source from fully-integrated players with no dependency on China.
The spread of COVID-19 worldwide brings about a sudden change across all the sectors and regions globally. It has forced various government to take harsh decisions in order to protect its people getting affected. Following the directives of the Central Government and also faced with logistics-related challenges for the movement of raw materials, finished goods, manpower etc, the chemical manufacturing facilities of the company had initially gone into temporary shutdown or safe mode in a phased manner; while the pharma business, being included in essential goods has continued manufacturing operations throughout this period. Subsequently, based on our wider product profile that includes key ingredients for various pharma/agrochemical intermediates, which are included in essential goods, we applied and were granted permissions to operate our chemical manufacturing facilities and to enable movement of critical workforce, materials, etc. After securing the supply chain, logistics and mandatory compliance requirements, we have resumed operations at all our manufacturing units since the first half of April. The units are currently operating at about 50-80% capacity utilization. While managing our production facilities, all key standard operating procedures (SOP's) for safety and health of employees and workers are being strictly followed to create a work ecosystem based on social distancing norms, sanitized facilities and restrictions on the movement of people as prescribed by the local authorities.
At present, in line with the Government advisory, the company's other establishments such as the offices at Mumbai and Vadodara as well as R&D units are temporarily closed and workfrom-home has been facilitated for the convenience and safety of all our employees. Meanwhile, the management continues to closely monitor all key developments across its various products and end markets and is taking adequate steps to address any impending issues.
Overall, we believe India continues to emerge as a global sourcing destination with strong demand from customers both in India and globally. As a part of this emerging trend, leading intermediate players such as AIL are helping innovator companies and other buyers meet their business objectives by creating robust, steady supply chains independent of China. Over the longer term horizon, we continue to have positive visibility for our products across many usage segments, which we believe will allow us to ingrain deeper into global supply chains, said the company statement.
