Going forward, we are redoubling our cane development efforts for increasing throughput
and improving our recovery. We are confident that these efforts will result in sustainably
increasing our raw material availability. We are planning to increase capacity at our
plants to take advantage of this increase in raw material supply. 99
Dear Shareholders,
The fiscal year 2023 saw DBOL make marked progress towards its strategic goals of
innovation, integration and value addition. Our initiatives during the year focussed on
improving cane development, better utilisation of capacities, and opening up new markets.
We also faced challenges, which led to a less than targeted performance of our core
business.
Through this letter, I would like to briefly discuss our hits and misses for the year
that went by, and share our emerging goals for this year.
Our biggest miss for FY 2023 was a decline in our "gross recovery - (sucrose %
cane)", which had knock-on impacts on the turnover and margin in our sugar segment.
In both our Asmoli and Mansurpur units, the sugarcane crop suffered from a severe pest
infestation. We have adopted a multi-pronged approach to contain this menace. Besides
piloting a programme for using drones to administer targeted pesticide application, we are
engaging eminent scientists early in the crop lifecycle. Additionally, we have begun
aggressively pursuing planting of new and improved alternate varieties to replace the 238
sugarcane variety (which is showing declining recovery).
In FY 2022, we had executed a capex project in our Asmoli unit to produce fine-grain,
pharma-grade sugar. This facility was commissioned in mid- December 2022; we utilised our
export quota to deliver this higher value sugar, leading to higher price realisation and
improved inventory management.
Our pharma-grade sugar initiative has opened up new avenues of business for us from
both domestic and global institutional buyers, who look at us as a reliable producer of
high-quality sugar.
Our energy efficiency focus and initiatives resulted in considerably higher bagasse
savings for the year, which we monetised at a higher premium than the previous year.
Going forward, we are redoubling our cane development efforts for increasing throughput
and improving our recovery. We are confident that these efforts will result in sustainably
increasing our raw material availability. We are planning to increase capacity at our
plants to take advantage of this increase in raw material supply. 'Premiumisation' will
continue to enhance our sugar realisation and margins - we are focussed on tapping the
inroads we have made into the premium institutional markets.
Bio fuels remains exciting, on the back of policy initiatives. Our Company is well
positioned to grow in this space.
We remain actively engaged with our farmer partners and our agricultural community, and
continue to develop education, sports and health facilities in line with our ambition to
be sustainable and balanced.
Our industry is at a very exciting and invigorating cusp, and I eagerly look forward to
progressing further on this journey with you.
Sincerely,
Gautam Goel
Managing Director.