Focusing on cost and quality to remain preferred supplier for our valued customers: Sabaleel Nandy, Executive Director & CEO, DCM Shriram Chemicals

Our revenues grew by over 30 per cent and we also had a good bottom-line (PBIT) performance of over Rs. 300 crore for the chemicals segment

DCM Shriram Chemicals, the second largest manufacturer of caustic soda in India, is going ahead with its growth strategy to further consolidate its position in the chemical markets. Sabaleel Nandy, Executive Director & CEO, DCM Shriram Chemicals shares about the latest development, expansion plan and overall performance of the company...

Key achievements of DCM Shriram Chemicals during FY 2024-25 to enhance its market position and operational efficiency? 

We had a successful FY 24-25 during which it was much about “New Rubber hitting the road” and we were able to successfully commission many of our planned investments. During the last 24-30 months, we had been executing a major capex plan of over Rs 3,200 crore, many of which are now commissioned and yielding desired results. These include the 850 TPD expansion of caustic soda capacity at Bharuch, thereby making our Bharuch plant the country’s largest single location chlor-alkali plant and making DCM Shriram Chemicals the country’s 2nd largest player with an annual caustic soda capacity of a million MT per annum. We also commissioned 2 new “caustic soda flakes” plants of 300 MTPD each, taking our total capacity of flakes to 900 TPD. Our new flaker plants are run exclusively by ladies. 

Moreover, a new 52,000 MTPA hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) plant is marking the entry of DCM Shriram Chemicals into potentially the value-added segment. H2O2 has wide and emerging applications in many traditional and new age industries. 

The company also expanded aluminium chloride capacity and the annual capacity today stands at over 50,000 MTPA. We are also going to commission a 50,000 MTPA epichlorohydrin (ECH) plant soon. As we know, the majority of ECH globally gets consumed in the manufacturing of epoxy resins.  

Also, in 2024, we announced new significant projects including entry into advanced materials with a proposed investment of Rs 1,000 crore and a further expansion of aluminium chloride and entry into calcium chloride. Most of these are expected to form a part of the offerings from the business in the current fiscal. 

We are gradually transitioning to renewable power which stands today at over 50 MW through group captive mode, thus enhancing our green power share to over 20 per cent of the total power consumed at Bharuch. We also commissioned a new state-of-the art 120 MW captive power plant to cater to the increased energy demands owing to expansion of caustic and other plants.  

Could you provide an overview of DCM Shriram Chemicals' revenue performance for FY 2024-25, highlighting key growth metrics and any significant year-over-year changes? 

DCM Shriram Chemicals has had a good year during FY 24-25. Our revenues grew by over 30 per cent and we also had a good bottom-line (PBIT) performance of over Rs. 300 crore for the chemicals segment.

We have enjoyed the benefits of the new plants being commissioned through the majority of the bottom-line benefits that have accrued from the cost-side interventions, from the new power plant as well as benefits that our digitization initiatives have begun to bear. 

Based on the global events of the past few months, what are the company’s projections and strategic priorities for the upcoming fiscal year to sustain and enhance revenue growth? 

At DCM Shriram Chemicals, the outlook for FY 25-26 remains cautiously optimistic. The FY 24-25 has been much better than the year before, i.e. FY 23-24 but we are yet to be anywhere close to what we had achieved in FY 22-23, mainly because the prices have significantly corrected since the peaks of 2022. 

However, 2025 started with the threats and counter-threats to global trade through multiple pronouncements of tariffs by several countries. Though there is a current state of pause and indications are that situations will normalize, we would like to continue to be vigilant about global trade flow impacts due to such tariff pronouncements. 

As a business, we will continue to work on the fundamentals around cost and quality and persist in our endeavour to be the preferred supplier of choice for our esteemed customers. 

DCM Shriram Chemicals has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Government of Gujarat to invest Rs. 12,000 crore in manufacturing of chemical and petrochemical products by 2028. How do you see this investment unfolding in the future? 

Over the last 24-30 months, DCM Shriram Chemicals has invested over Rs 3,200 crore in its Bharuch plant, the country’s largest single location caustic plant, for the various expansion and new products. In Bharuch, we are a part of the GIDC cluster (Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation). The advantage of being in a cluster is that there are downstream consumers for our products. These mutual dependencies with our co-located customer industries have over the time evolved into a symbiotic relationship between the players and it is almost a scenario where member industries are cooperating with each other for maximizing their own performance potentials.  

Given this context and in light of the emergence of the belt as a chemicals hub of the country, we continue to remain bullish about the prospects of the state of Gujarat going forward. The signing of the MoU with the Gujarat government of Rs 12,000 crores is a manifestation of our continued bullishness towards the state and our own conviction about the long term opportunities on offer in the chemicals space for us.  

DCM Shriram Chemicals has made an interesting announcement related to the Flaker plant being run exclusively by ladies. This looks like a unique move within the chemical industry at large. Please tell us more about this. 

During the last year, we commissioned 2 new caustic soda flaking plant (flakes are the solid form of caustic soda, the other product form being “lye”, in which caustic soda is in liquid state), each having 300 MTPD capacity and in what is probably a first for the industry, we are having these new flakes plants run exclusively by ladies. In fact, it’s not just the operations and maintenance – ladies manage the accompanying support functions like QC, packing, etc. The flakes plants are in fact a “no-men” zone and we have received significant interest from peer industries, customers and other partners /stakeholders about this move. 

We also read that DCM Shriram Chemicals is engaging “differently-abled” people in their Bharuch plant. What is this about? 

We have for long espoused the mantra of WIDE which stands for “We are Inclusive, Diverse and Equitable” and for us, “diversity” is beyond just gender. About a year back, our warehouse team undertook an experiment to enroll differently-abled people for managing warehouse operations. Little did we know that after a year, we will have over 25 per cent differently-abled colleagues in our warehouse. Our differently-abled colleagues have been extensively trained on safety and other aspects of working inside a plant and we are happy to mention that it is today much beyond an experiment that has the promise of becoming a way of life for the warehouse. 

You have recently signed an MoU for research collaboration with the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT). How is the company’s collaboration with ICT shaping up?

We are proud to have entered into a long partnership with ICT. Under this partnership, scientists at our Innovation Center will work closely with the professors at ICT to progress the frontiers of research through collaboration and partnership. We have also jointly agreed that “sustainability”, “greening” and “value-addition” will be the key themes for this partnership. Moreover, we intend to offer interesting internship opportunities to the ICT students at our Innovation Centre and plants. Though it is still early days, we have already articulated for ourselves a charter of joint research and are looking forward to some interesting breakthroughs in the months to come. 

DCM Shriram Chemicals has been taking significant steps towards further digital transformation of the business. Please share with us the details?  

At DCM Shriram Chemicals, we have launched a project to further deepen our safety and digital excellence. We have called this “Project BLESSED” where BLESSED is an acronym that stands for “Becoming a Lighthouse through Exemplary Safety Systems and Excellence in Digitalization”. While on one hand, we are working on 2 parallel streams related to Workplace Safety and Process Safety Management, on the other, we are using Digital & Analytics to understand better the “how and why” of operating performance so that our processes are run even more efficiently. We have engaged world-class partners /enablers to help us in this journey and it is our intent to make BLESSED a cornerstone of our D&A transformation journey. 

Contribution of renewable energy in the total energy mix of the company. How do you see it changing in future? 

Caustic soda manufacturing is a power hungry operation and we believe this offers us a significant opportunity for greening and having more renewable power in our mix. With this conviction, we have been progressively deepening our renewable power footprint including noteworthy increases in the last 24 months. We have over 50 MW of renewable power in our mix and over 20 per cent of our power today comes from renewable sources. We will continue to explore further addition of renewable power in the overall power mix. 

How integral are the CSR projects for the company’s overall vision? Which Key projects were prioritized in FY 2024-25 and what outcomes have been achieved?  

As a group, DCM Shriram has always believed in growing with the communities where one operates. Long before rules around CSR were formulated, the group has worked towards improvements of the lives of the people and communities around us. 

At DCM Shriram Chemicals, we have adopted specific items from the overall group’s CSR charter, in close consultation with the DCM Shriram Foundation and translated them into specific measurable programs of CSR for us. For example, under the aegis of “Kishori Utkarsh Pahel” (KUP), one of the flagship initiatives of the “DCM Shriram Foundation”, at Bharuch, the chemicals team is working towards promoting health awareness of adolescent girls. Further, under a different program, to promote green cover, we have set a target to plant 1 million saplings. Another of our CSR programs aims at de-silting of check-dams under which we will plan to conserve an additional quantum of over a billion litres of water. Yet another has been in the area of waste handling for municipalities and /or village clusters – one of the first such large scale deployments of our waste handling model was recently done in Bharuch by our CSR team.  

At DCM Shriram Chemicals, CSR isn’t a one-off event. We run these programs on a mission mode and the objective is to deliver significant on-ground impact. Thus most of our programs require 2-3 years of persistent implementation.