Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Archean Chemical Industries Limited (NSE: ACI) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 13, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Rampraveen Swaminathan — Managing Director
Natarajan Ramamurthy — Chief Financial Officer
Rajeev Kumar — Deputy General Manager of Finance
Analysts:
Sanjesh Jain — Analyst
Aditya Ketan — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Rohit Nagraj — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to RKN Chemical Industries Limited Q4FY26 earnings conference. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during this conference, please signal an operator by pressing STAR and then zero on your touch tone telephones. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ram Praveen Swaminathan, Managing Director of Arcane Chemical.
Thank you. And over to you sir.
Rampraveen Swaminathan — Managing Director
Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us here today and a warm welcome to you all to our Q4 and FY26 earnings call. Thank you for taking the time once again to join us. I’m joined here today by Mr. Natashajan Ramamurthy, CFO of the company, Mr. Rajiv Kumar, DGM Finance and Strategy and our Investor Relations Advisor, SGA. I hope you all have had a chance to look through the financial results and the investor presentation which is available on our website and stock exchanges. I will provide an overview of the market conditions and external environment, cover some of the significant events in the past quarter, provide you a commentary on Q4 performance and FY25 26 performance and outline some of our focus areas going forward.
Just beginning with the market, I think overall demand for our products from our n key markets has been a mixed bag for most of the year. Demand from industrial salt has been muted which has been reflecting a tough pricing environment for the product category. While demand for bromine and bromine derivatives has been positive in most geographies across the world. Competitive intensity remains high, especially on salt, with increasing capacity in multiple regions and some more being added in FY26 in Australia and some parts of the Middle East.
The year that has gone by has also been marked by considerable uncertainty, volatility and continuously evolving external environments. Several macroeconomic developments, including the India US Trade discussions, the India EU FTA negotiations, tariffs imposed by the US Government and more recently the Iran US conflict have influenced market dynamics across demand, supply and pricing. While we have managed to navigate these conditions, the impact on our business cannot be overlooked and therefore this year has been fairly skewed with headwinds outweighing the positives resulting in a constant focus on recalibrating the business operations.
In Q4 we have seen a heightened impact due to the US Iran crisis,
Natarajan Ramamurthy — Chief Financial Officer
But that
Rampraveen Swaminathan — Managing Director
In more detail shortly on a positive note, our key end customers and industry participants share our optimism about the future. We believe that the categories we operate in demand outlook in the medium term remains pretty positive and we are very well positioned in terms of our overall value package. Now looking at some key developments which have impacted our business during the quarter, let me first begin with our semiconductor business. Earlier this week our subsidiary 6M assigned the fiscal Support agreement with the Government of India for our semiconductor project Orissa.
This is a very important milestone for us as it now enables us to accelerate the financial closure and the execution of the project. Just to provide you a recap, we did do the groundbreaking ceremony at site in November and we have teams that since then have been completing detailed engineering, financing, supply partnerships and doing resource development and deployment. Overall, the program remains on track and with the FSA we hope to accelerate progress in the coming quarters. Another key development for us during the quarter was the impact of some changes in terms of bridges and road notifications in Kutch.
In early part of Q4, the local administration of Gujarat initiated road repairs and construction in a key stretch along the corridor from the Hajipur plant to the Jakao and Mundra ports. As a result of that, we saw a significant increase in distance of transportation which has impacted our fleet availability due to higher tat and fuel costs as the distance effective distance increased by 2x. As we stand right now, we understand this construction will continue till early Q3 of this financial year, after which we’ll be able to come back to more normal operations both in terms of distance covered and that of our fleets.
The third big thing which has impacted us in Q3 has been the Middle east crisis. The US Iran conflict has had an impact on demand, supply chain volatility and commodity costs. In our business. The demand for bromine has increased sharply due to global demand supply imbalance as a result of the conflict. This of course is now becoming normalized as end user industries are struggling to pass on the cost increase to their customers. The cost of logistics and global freight has also increased significantly for our basket of customers and the geographies they operate in, our costs have increased by 18 to 20% on global freight since late February.
The sharp rise of prices in Industrial Fuel Our industrial fuel prices have increased by nearly 50% and inconsistent retail availability has had a large bearing on our transportation costs driven by the fuel increases which have gone up by approximately 50%. Prices of other key commodities, Indonesian coal, sulphur and propanol have also been impacted unfavorably in the range of 20 to 30%. So in a very demanding and difficult environment, despite these headwinds, our focus has been on the key areas I mentioned in the last earnings call stabilizing our operations especially in terms of bromine production, ensuring market growth, market share growth in industrial salt and derivatives, retaining our key customers in bromine, driving commercial and pricing actions and doing aggressive cost reduction to mitigate the impact of these factors.
In this context, let me now cover the overall performance for the quarter and the full year on a standalone basis as well as some of our key subsidiary divisions. Industrial salt for the volume for the quarter was 1.1 million tons down 7.2% versus last year. Volumes are impacted by nearly 120,000 tonnes due to customer deferrals on account of the US Iran conflict and around 250,000 tonnes of shipments we could not complete because of logistics issues and challenges I mentioned earlier. For the full year though we had sales of 4.2 million tonnes, up by 22% from the previous year.
We had earlier share that we estimated to meet around 4.5 million tonnes of shipments during the year, which has largely been impacted by the factors I just mentioned. Pricing in the quarter remained under pressure versus last year and was down by around 10% but has been kind of stable versus the prior quarter. Industrial salt has contributed to 67% of the sales in the quarter we just completed, right? It’s 67% of Q4 sales last year and on 70% in FY25 26. Bromine volume coming to Bromine Bromine volume was at around 3,731 metric tons for the quarter.
It is up 53% from the quarter of 2Q25 26 and up by 4% versus the prior year. We continue to drive improvement recovery plan in production and since midseb we have recovered our production levels to historical levels. During the quarter we continue to implement pricing actions with select customers and short term contracts. Realization was up 14% year on year. Overall elemental bromine contributed 32% of sales for Q4 last year and around 30% of the sales in Q4. FYI of F26, the bromine derivatives business which is housed in Acumen Chemicals Private Limited continues to scale up.
Sales for the quarter were up by nearly 50% year on year and revenue for the full year was up by nearly 300% compared to the previous year. While our margins remained under pressure due to the lower capacity utilization during this ramp up phase we estimate that our contribution margins will improve in new products and process optimization initiatives underway supported by volume growth from some of our existing products like calcium bromide and NPBR. During the quarter we launched PBR3 and also continue to scale up our zinc bromide volumes for select customers.
Capacity utilization for the quarter still remained at around 45% and we continue to focus on driving that up. SOP volumes ref 26 to 644 tonnes contributing to a very small level of revenue of around three and a half crores. As highlighted in earlier calls, there are complex technical issues for which we are now defining a kind of long term solution. This involves reengineering of the entire product system and the manufacturing process. This program is currently underway and we expect to complete plant trials in the first quarter of this year and go into a higher level of production in the second half of the year.
As you are aware, we continue to scale up our operations in Idealist Mudchemi, earlier known as Oran hydrocarbons. Over the past 12 months we have commissioned three plants and are currently progressing with customer trials. Our Gujarat plant is production ready but we still wait unnecessary approvals with state authorities. For the Nagri plant in Andhra Pradesh where we manufacture starch and packed products, we are in the process of redefining the product roadmap to better align our product with market requirements.
We expect to have a fairly lean first half of this year in terms of ideal smart chemistry, but we expect that the second half will start getting to a larger ramp up. The aforementioned issues on logistics costs have impacted the short term profitability of the industrial soil segment. Our customer relationships and market position remain strong and we estimate to see a full recovery in coming quarters with the completion of the highway projects and reduction in commodity and fuel costs as Iran US conflict subsides.
Coming on to Financial performance To give you a quick summary of financial performance, total income for Q4F 2526 stood at 304.7 crores, a 9% decrease on a year on year basis. In terms of overall mix bromine contributed 32% and industrial salt contributed 67%. Volume of sales of bromine as I mentioned earlier stood at 3,731 tonnes. Volume of sales for industrial salt for the quarter was 1.1 million tonnes. Overall EBITDA stood at were reported was 66.4 crores, a 34.3% decline. Year on year EBITDA margin stood at 21.79% for the quarter and profit after tax for Q4FY26 was at around 29.8 crores.
The year on year decline in EBITDA was largely driven by the drop in pricing or the lower pricing realization and lower volume, both of which happened in industrial salt. We did also see an year on year increase in logistics cost, but that was largely offset by improvements in bromine both in terms of realization as well as in terms of volume. In terms of full year performance, total revenue for the year stood at is reported at 1088.8 crores, a 2% growth on a year on year basis. EBITDA for the year stood at around 308 crores, a 17% dip on a year on year basis.
Profit for after tax for the year report was 154.3 million, that’s 150.3 crores, a 17% decline year on year on a consolidated basis, total revenue for Q4 was around 306.3 crores. The bromine derivative business contributed around 23.8 crores with a volume sale of around 1400 tonnes for Q4 EBITDA for the company overall spread 491 crores 49.1 crores in Q4 FY26 and profit after tax on a fully consolidated basis was around 12.2 crores. From an FY26 perspective, overall revenue is 1108 crores. Bromine derivatives business contributed around 81 crores.
The volume sale of around 5300 tonnes for the year EBITDA for the company stood at 265 crores on a fully consolidated basis with net profits of 105.4 crores. A detailed breakup of the constituent elements of our consolidated performance has been provided the Earnings deck on our website for your review. Let me end my comments by summarizing our focus in the coming year and some reflections now that I completed three months in my role. As we look forward, I think we have established three keyer strategic priorities for the company.
The first one is consolidate the score, salt and bromine business. Secondly to scale up our derivatives, oil field and SOP businesses while we continue to invest in long term opportunities advanced materials for batteries and semiconductors. The underlying focus of these priorities is to ensure that we are driving earnings quality while also ensuring effective capital allocation across the business. We are delivering this driving these priorities through four strategic levers driving focused growth where we drive scale and volume in all businesses through differentiated products, long term customer partnerships and commercial excellence.
The second one is operational excellence driving productivity and growth in all our operations especially on boom, SOP derivatives and developing a world class logistics capability while ensuring capital efficiency. Thirdly, responsible stewardship in terms of driving and inclusion empowered organization, focusing on sustainability and supporting local communities and lastly technology and automation to drive increased efficiency reduce our cost to serve and drive agility and predictability across our business.
I think together as we look across these four levers and we believe that we will continue to drive volume growth in the core business. And as we start getting some of the external factors on cost stabilizing we should be able to get to a historical margin level of performance across the business. With this I’ll open it for Q and A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may enter STAR and one on the Touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may enter Star and 2. Participants are requested to please use only handsets while asking a question. We also request participants to please limit their questions to two questions per participant. You may then rejoin the queue for follow ups. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.
The first question is from the line of Sanjay Jain from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Good afternoon Sanjay.
Sanjesh Jain
Good afternoon sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I got few of the question first on this freight thing the entire long route and the higher fuel cost how much it did really hurt in terms of the cost during the Q3. Sorry. In terms of the Q4 earnings that’s number one. Number two, bromine prices globally has gone up sharply. I know we have a long term contract but just to understand how should we see the bromine prices for next year. And in your you mentioned that we have reached the historical peak of bromine production.
I think historically quarterly we were at 5500 metric ton. This quarter we are at 3700. When we say that we have reached the peak do we imply that we are touching that 5500 kind of a production? And an added question to that, we have put up a blue area where we are looking to expand the brine pond. And we said that this will only enhance the production. Now including that what is the peak production we are looking up and will it come in FY27 or FY28? These are my initial questions. Thanks.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
So I will take them in. I will take them in whichever order which I find I can remember them. And if I do slipper question please do kind of remind me again. So I think firstly as far as the logistics cost is concerned, I think simplistically put three phases. January was pretty lean. We didn’t have a big issue in Jan during Feb as you seen we had a significant increase because of the route change and that added nearly 100 to 120 rupees. Per tonne of cost. And in the third month we had both the diesel price increase and the extended route.
So we ended the quarter with roughly around 200 to 220 rupees per ton in increase of cost of transportation. Okay.
Sanjesh Jain
On a weighted average basis.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
On a weighted average basis across the quarter, probably around 14 to 15 crores was impact because of the higher logistics cost right across the three months. But that’s kind of the net gross number. I think I thought the second question was concerned in terms of bromine production. Yes, I think as I said, we come back to historical levels on a daily rate. I think our historical peak, and I’m talking from memory, was 5,030 odd tonnes in a quarter. And that quarter was a 91 day quarter or something.
But roughly it would be at on 54, 55 tonnes per day. And we are roughly getting back to that range right now in terms of daily production. Okay, now you must make this one and I just would state here that we look at modeling it out or forecasting it out. Obviously there are scheduled downtimes etc which do impact a little bit, but we are in that range right now. Okay, just confirming that
Sanjesh Jain
Broadly. 20,000. So yeah, so we are 21,000 metric ton in FY27. If we sustain say 55 ton per day.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
If we sustain 55 or in that range with a little bit of hit on the monsoon when we will come down little bit, we should be in the range which you mentioned. And that’s for the third thing which you said, which I think raised to us around the Brinefield expansion. So as you know, we have been expanding the brine field. We remain optimistic about long term growth. So we do expect the salt business will continue to grow at 10 to 12%. It is at a historical. It’s kind of bottomed out in terms of margins in large part because of cost increase you’ve had on logistics.
But that’s a structural cost which will go away. We have line of sight to that kind of ending to some extent. So we continue to be bullish on salt. So the Brinefield expansion really will help us drive that 1015 percentage growth in capacity of salt. And of course it also will allow us to provide people to produce more liquor for bromine volume as well.
Sanjesh Jain
So what are we looking at bromine then in an expanded capacity? Because we had a need to 500, we are struggling at 20,000. So how should we look at the journey from here to the nameplate capacity?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
So I think that’s a mixed question right because there are multiple factors involved. But I do think that we are expecting or hoping to be able to grow 15, 20% a year in terms of bromine production. I think that’s what we had mentioned last quarter as well. Next, what I said last quarter, next pit stop if you may, is to try and get to 25,000 tonnes and then beyond that to over a period of time to 40,000 tonnes. And that’s kind of what I would really still be anchoring our business on in terms of what we are trying to establish as goals for the company.
The 40,000 ton expansion obviously happens along with the derivatives business growth as well. So it kind of happens hand in hand but that’s kind of where we are anchoring it at now. Is it sequential? Is it year on year the multiple factors involved? The brine fields themselves are being expanded now. It’ll be six to nine months before we finish the expansion and then an entire season before we actually fill the ponds and we actually have enough condensation, evaporation to be able to basically draw them out as liquor and as salt and crystallization.
So it’s a stage period, Sanjay. But the key thing for us has been to start putting capacity ahead of demand and start making that move, which is what we are doing right now.
Sanjesh Jain
Very clear. And on the pricing, bromine pricing, because globally. Yes, on the
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Bromine pricing. Sorry I missed that question. Yes. So I think as I mentioned, we had a question last quarter as well and probably had it earlier as well. I mentioned that we are making pricing actions so you’ve seen some impact of that in Q4 on a year, on year basis where we have increased the prices on contracts. Obviously prices went up in a short period of time very quickly. But I think as we look at Q, as we look at currently, we have, I would say renegotiated a large part of our long term contracts.
Right. I won’t put a specific number on it Sanjay, but we have negotiated a very large part of our long term contracts for this year. So we have also gone back and reopened or rediscovered with customers on contracts which are going, which still had open windows on them and gone back and renegotiated some of them back as well. So today I think as we stand, the majority of our bromine contracts stand renegotiated upwards. I will not put a specific number on that Sanjay, but that’s kind of direction at least where we are going.
Sanjesh Jain
Got it. One on the acums we had not a great year last year. I thought the ramp up expectation was much better. Than what we have delivered. So what are the things which have not gone in our favor and what are the measures we are taking to see that accumulate scales up to the level where probably which is more satisfactory? And number two, what’s the plan on the flame retardant? It’s still under discussion or it is rested for a while. How should we see that?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Okay, so I think for Q, there’s no question that it has been a year where we’ve had growth, but we’ve not been the growth, we’ve not had the growth we expected. Right. And I would say two, three things are the areas I think we have kind of been challenged with. I won’t say there have been things that are necessarily done badly on, but they’ve just been challenged. I think the first one has been product development. You know, some of our products especially target towards pharma applications have been a little bit longer cycle than we expected them to be, Sanjay.
And that’s actually taken a little bit more time to get, you know, it can get converted into specific orders and pull through. The second thing which has been a challenge has been, you know, in terms of commercial pricing, I think we have had, you know, had to work hard in getting pricing in there. You’re entrant into the market in an established market where other players are there. So that obviously puts pressure on you on pricing. And probably we’ve been, we’ve been forced to have slightly more aggressive pricing than we probably would have initially expected the same time last year.
The third thing which has been a challenge to some extent has been that now obviously the accumule business gets its bromine from the hydro peel business. And some of our challenges in the second and third quarter on bromine production obviously translated into a ramp up at that business as well. So what are we doing to fix that? We are facing exactly three things I spoke about now. We have deepened our sales capability. We’re expanding both in domestic and exports, our channel partnerships. We’re also accelerating product development.
So in Q4 alone, as I told you, we upgraded the zinc bromide product. We launched PBR3. We’re looking at releasing a couple of more alkali bromide products in the first half of this year. We’ve also been expanding on cbr, CABR and NPBR three volumes which both which obviously are large markets in terms of the oil field and the AG and AG intermediate usage. So some more market penetration, more product development, more consistent supply of bromine from the Hajibeer plant. And lastly we are working a lot in Terms of process optimization and process costs.
So we actually have to kind of be able to drive that. I’m confident that I think you will see. I think you will see a step change in a significant improvement in the business as you dive that product utilization improvement starting early part of this year.
Sanjesh Jain
Very clear. Sir, just one last. Sorry, I’m pushing it late on the semic sector. Can you just help us? The milestone from here to the production. What is the time frame and the key milestone we need to track? And 1.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Raji, you want to take it?
Rajeev Kumar
Yeah. Let me take this question. So we have started working on the design aspect and the early work we have already commenced. Our target is to start the substructure work from July and broadly it should take 24 to 30 months from that time.
Sanjesh Jain
24 to 30 months from now or
Rajeev Kumar
From July?
Sanjesh Jain
From July. From July of last year. Right.
Rajeev Kumar
July of this year.
Sanjesh Jain
From July of this year we are looking at 24 to 30 months.
Rajeev Kumar
Yeah.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
So Sanjay, so if you index the period from now to July, probably 27 to 13 months roughly is what it will take.
Sanjesh Jain
Got it. And. And just one bookkeeping question. What was the SOP volume and revenue for this quarter?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
For this quarter? Yes. I will have somebody drop your note. I think I mentioned the full year number but it’s okay. I’ll have somebody in our team email it to you.
Sanjesh Jain
But it’s fine. What was the full year?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
3.5 crores and 650 tons. 664 I think was the exact tonnage. 644 tons and 3.49 crores.
Sanjesh Jain
Thank you sir. I think that is all from my side. And thanks for patiently answering all those questions. And best of luck for the coming quarters.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Thank you. Thank you.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Aditya Ketan from Smiths Institutional. Please go ahead.
Aditya Ketan
Yeah. Thank you sir for the opportunity. Just a couple of questions. Sir, you mentioned in your opening remarks onto the competitive intensity pressures. That is one of the reasons why we are not able to increase the bromine prices. Because when we look at the spot prices of bromine over the last three quarters versus realizations there has been a stark difference actually. Spot prices have gone up in one way. But our realizations look almost flattish. Only when we look at the last 2/4 data. Also is it because of the competitive pressures which you mentioned is that stopping the prices to move higher.
And secondly, sir, when I heard your commentary onto the bromine volume you mentioned about some 10 to 15% growth. But when we look at this number 10 to 15% growth would still be around some 15, 16,000 tonnes only for FY27 also versus what real management was guiding around 2022, 22 to around 25k tons for FY26. So there’s a stark difference in into the numbers which earlier management was guiding and what we are seeing for FY27. Any thoughts of what has changed material into the business?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Let me answer those questions a bit more specifically. So firstly I think on the bromine pricing it’s not a competitive intensity issue as much as the fact that as we mentioned earlier Asithya, we have a fairly large constant of long term contracts. These are contracts we enter typically with annual pricing and since we enter them with annual pricing we generally don’t change the pricing based on spot conditions too much. So 70% to 80%, let’s say 70% of our business is long term contracts, 30% of our business is short term contracts which are like which is deal to deal price.
And therefore what you will always see is that when the prices go up it takes us time to catch up. When the prices go down as well we get the benefit because our customers continue to buy at the old prices from us. And therefore what’s happened the last 18 months is 15 months roughly has been that prices have been inching up slowly till around February, March when prices went up substantially. We have taken the opportunity to go ahead of the curve this time in Feb and March and kind of even start renegotiating our contracts ahead of their closure.
And that’s why as I mentioned to Sanjay earlier on, you know, Sanjay’s question was there we have repriced now a majority of our contracts upwards and therefore I think you will see that being different going forward. That said I think you must not, you must bear caution that spot prices are not a very good reflection of the overall blended price of the market. Typically the entire industry on bromine works 60 to 70% on long term contracts and 20 to 30% on short term contracts. So when suddenly one company suddenly has a shortage of bromine or has a production problem then those customers assign long term contracts with them become spot customers in the market.
They often buy at very very high prices because they have to manage their end customer contract. So always spot prices are not a reflection of the blended average price for any company. And so we always encourage people look at what people are reporting, don’t look at what the landed Shanghai index tells you or landed China index tells you because the short term elements there’s logistics, pricing there’s transportation. There are multiple factors there. But broadly we have gone back and renegotiated the majority of our customer base and you should see some of that pulling through.
As far as your comment on the bromine volume I think let me restate what I said. Sanjay’s question was are you back to the 55 tons per day level? And I kind of said yes we are up here the 50, 55,000 tonnes per day level which adds up which is around 20, 21,000 tonnes. And I said our goal next year is to probably 15% above that. Right. So this year is to be at that level. And next year we are around 15% above that which gets closer. 25,000 tons number which has been quoted earlier. And lastly Aditya, on a lighter note I would just like to tell you that the management has not changed.
The management has expanded. The earlier MD is the executive vice chairman of the company and therefore the management has expanded. It has not changed.
Aditya Ketan
So we
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Still are very much. We still are very much committed to the numbers which has been shared by Ranjit.
Aditya Ketan
Just one more question sir. If I can squeeze in this quarter we are seeing some. Some 13 crore of increase in into the stocks which is reflected into the cogs. Can you highlight like what this change is actually and secondly provide the internal sales volume of bromine for whole fiscal FY26 the capital consumption.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
So. So I think the second one I think I will have to get back to you. I don’t have a specific number right now. Aditya. If you can drop a mail to us our team will respond. Okay. As far as the first question is concerned the 13 crores I think as I mentioned in my opening comments we had early initially also kind of hoped to do slightly higher volume of tonnage of salt in the quarter. And we are not able to do shipments because some orders got differed. And also we had an issue where we had because of logistics cost we could not fill those volume and therefore salt free salt inventory increased during the quarter.
And that is a substantial part of what you see there as an increase in inventory cost.
Aditya Ketan
Got it sir. Thank you sir.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Avnish Tiwari from Vikarya. Please go ahead.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Hi. Am I audible?
Operator
Yes sir. Please. Hi Amnesh.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Yeah. Please carry on.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
You mentioning in context of bromine Dema that because and this industry is not able to pass through the pricing the demand sort of getting rationed out or getting normalized. Can you expand on that commentary and will that be a hurdle for You, I mean you have already renegotiated the long term contract. But if you can give us a color around your 30% deal by deal business, how is the pricing there in relative to your long term contract versus the spot which I know is not real, is much higher. So is it in the middle of these two spot versus a long term contract or more closer to your long term contract?
These two areas if you can expand upon.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
So I think let me just start off with probably a more external facing number which everybody likes to quote, but that’s at least generally a thing that’s. So I think as you know, shortly after the crisis started, bromine prices went up around 70 to 80,000 RMB, which is almost like 8 or $9 per kg. It went up that high because there was a sudden shortage of bromine in the demand of bromine supply in the market. Our end users like companies based, flame retardant, etc. Has their supply contacts to honor.
And so there was a sudden because of shortage of supply they had to basically buy at whatever. And so spot prices went up. Obviously what most of those end customers are finding is that is not sustainable for them to price it to their users. And therefore there has been some softening in terms of their end users pushing back and not accepting price increases and that coming back through the chain to us as well. And therefore there’s some amount of softening. And today if you look at it, I think prices have come back to around $5 per kg, 4.54, 4.5 dollars per kg and then depends on how much transportation etc.
You consider and how logistics is. So you have this thing which is see sawing because of that issue. And you must remember we make an intermediate which goes into a product which then goes to the end user. So the entire value chain has to absorb the price increase. The first increase has happened was a supply led increase or supply shortage that is normalizing itself because that price is not being passed through fully. That said, I do believe that our prices will reflect the broad movement in terms of market pricing going forward.
Okay. Right. So that’s. Does that answer your question?
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Yeah, that’s good.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Thank you.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
You were also mentioning that this short term deal by deal pricing, is this more closer to the long term pricing or this more closer to the spot which is 4.$5.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
So in general short term pricing is closer to spot. Okay. And obviously long term pricing is driven by multi year relationships that we have end markets we want to play with. We don’t want to always have. We don’t want to have geographic concentration in one geography. There are multiple considerations. What are the end user industries, flame retardant, right pharma etc. You want to be able to position our product in oil field chemicals. What’s the geographical diversification? We want to have what is the customer concentration in terms of what’s the synergy benefit a customer brings across bromine across derivative.
So there are multiple factors but spot is generally closer to market.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
The second question which I have is that if you look at your supply shortage you said has now reduced this other supply of bromine which comes from locations which are under stress right now. Has that supply now normalized or that supply is still under not normal.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
I think that supply is still trailing probably what historical the past levels were. It is still tailing that obviously you’re driving challenges. Your new supply routes have emerged. Right. But I would still say that there is that underlying there’s still a gap in the market demand, supply,
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Supply. Has it been affected or that Jordan Israel has not been impacted that much. I mean to be fair,
Rampraveen Swaminathan
I mean it probably would be unfair to just speak of a specific geography because in these geographies I mentioned there are large companies which are at play and large players. But I would say generally I think we look at trade route volume amnesh. I think there is still a gap right on those trade routes compared to some of the volumes pre conflict.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Okay. So it is still a shortfall and demand rationing is what is bringing the prices down. Otherwise it would have been a much higher price.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Well the short. Again the point was understand that this is because most of the industry works with long term contract pricing whenever there’s a small dip in shortage and also sells long term capacity gets sold and blocked on a long term basis. Effectively spot capacity which gets traded all the time is only 20% or 25% of overall capacity. So one manufacturer suddenly. Right. So that that’s the impact which happens.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
If I can please one more. If you were to look at your numbers general versus consolidated and there’s a loss between these two because of this other businesses you have. Can you articulate where this these numbers might go? Let’s say in terms of EBITDA revenue in one or two two years time. I know you mentioned a lot of steps you are taking. No,
Rampraveen Swaminathan
I don’t mean we don’t make forward looking statements. So I will probably, I’ll take an exception on that. But you know, not good to you. I won’t give specific guidance on those
Natarajan Ramamurthy
In the past have you given the guidance around break even points when you can achieve there or any like what metrics you can track? No, we don’t. We.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
No, no we don’t really provide specific guidance to that level of detail.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Okay. And I’m sorry to. Sir, please.
Operator
Mr. Tiwari, please return to the queue. Thank you. Participants, please limit your questions to only two questions. We have several participants awaiting their turn. The next question is from the line of. Chirag from Keynote, please go ahead.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Hi Chirag, good afternoon.
Operator
Yes Chirag, please go ahead.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Yes, thank you for the opportunity. So first of all I would like to understand the significant volatility that is taking place in ruby prices. It has some almost $5,000 to almost 9,000, 10,000 and not reverting back to almost 7,000 if I’m not wrong. So just wanted to understand what actually brings that kind of wallet in the market.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
Share. All your questions, I’ll answer them all together.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Sure, sure. My second question is related to. As crude prices have started moving up from the earliest $65. Great. So are we seeing new drilling activities taking place due to which the the mudkhannies Orion hydrocarbons business is actually starting seeing some new revenue to come into and there are some bookkeeping questions. One is what actually comes into intangible under development when it is getting highlighted in our. And were there any devaluation taking place on raw material levels?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
I’ll try and answer first and then Natarajan to answer next to Right. But I think what does bromine pricing as I said a couple of times the way that actually broadly the industry works is that basically the buyers and sellers in the industry tend to work on long term contracting for a large part of their requirements or the large part of their production and therefore what happens is the majority of the market still transacts on that long term pricing. Right. So for example, if you and I have a contract and we have signed a contract that said three and a half dollars per ton and you sign for 75% of your volume requirement and I sign for 75% of my capacity, that volume still transacts at a long term price only what happens is that there’s a sudden imbalance which comes either because of sudden spike in demand or a sudden shortage of supply, then that puts pressure on the market and that pressure gets concentrated around the spotlessness.
So if there’s a sudden spike and if there’s a sudden shortage in supply which happens, then what happens is that you have to go and still buy your bromine from somewhere you tend to go and buy your balanced bromine which I am not supplying the long term contract at whatever price you think you can afford and that pushes the prices up and therefore what the industry tends to hear as volatile prices is basically only spot prices. Spot is a fraction of the market and we cannot make an effort to consistently remind that spot is only a fraction of the market.
But that’s actually where you see all the volatility. You don’t see a volatility in the majority of the market where there’s a lot of movement happening. So that’s, that’s the question around that. Do you want to. Natashan, you want to talk about revaluation?
Natarajan Ramamurthy
So the
Rajeev Kumar
Second question which was intangible electric under development. So 6M actually is doing a pilot line for VFL Manufacturing at iit. So whatever capital we are, we have spent there so far is under intellectual property development. At the same time there is a technology transfer agreement with classic wafer path. The expenditure committed towards that so far is also under IAU deals.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Got, got it. Two more questions. When food prices movement and are we seeing any positive development related to trials or. And second was
Rampraveen Swaminathan
I think Mud chemicals. I’m sorry I missed that question but I think right now oil and gas demand is still fairly muted because a lot of that space in the Middle east and therefore I don’t think we have seen anything tangibly move in terms of short term demand. I think the view is that once the war subsides then obviously we’ll go through reconstruction phase and that should give us a flip in terms of demand.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Got it, got it. And sir, related to that any revaluation on inventory because there is a significant shot up.
Unidentified Participant
No revaluation on the inventory.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
And what would be the capex debt level? What kind of debt level are we comfortable with at companies level?
Rampraveen Swaminathan
We don’t make a specific view like that. Our view is that capital has to be capital discipline is about investing in projects which have got good returns. We are growth oriented and therefore we would continue to look at investing in high growth return projects which also means that we have to scale up our existing businesses and deliver the right level of returns from them.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
One thing, I’m sorry sir, please come. Please
Operator
Return to the Q Chirag sir.
Natarajan Ramamurthy
Thank you.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Rohit Nagraj from 361 Capital. Please go ahead.
Rohit Nagraj
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So I’ll ask the all the questions together. So first thank you. Yeah thank you sir. On the bromine pricing so I understand that the long term contract should be either calendar year or financial year and probably both would have consummated for the next year. So what is the kind of pricing range that we are looking at? And I’m not looking at a specific number but a range would be helpful in terms of building in for the estimates. Second thing on Orin hydrocarbon when we acquired we had an estimate of 150 crores of revenues.
When are we likely to reach that mark? I mean any timelines would be broader timelines would be helpful. Third is in terms of industrial salt you said there is pricing pressure. I was unable to get the exact point because NHS is an export oriented business and the realizations in terms of dollar terms are certainly, I mean rupee terms certainly would be better because of the depreciation. And last one, bookkeeping question. What is the cash as of 31st March on the books? Thank you.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
All right, I’ll ask Natajan to answer the fourth question but let me try and take the first three. So I think I’m going to award you a range as well. On bromine pricing I think as I mentioned we have gone and renegotiated a majority of our contracts even if they were not expired. We have gone back and delinquent almost all our LTCs off. Right. We’ve gone back to spoken to customers. I mentioned that we do this in the earlier call as well and so we have kind of completed a majority of that and therefore I think you’ll see the flow through of it.
However we really don’t give very specific guidance on pricing for reasons you very well understand. Okay. Because it’s. And therefore I would avoid giving the range as well. But as I said we will see some flows. We’ll see flow through impact as we’ve done that as far as ordnance hydrocarbons is concerned I think we had given a guidance of 150 crores. It was basically divided across three products. You know bentonite which we make in the Mandvi plant in Gujarat Berite in a plant in Kodur and the third one has been around starch and fibroseed products and packed products which we make in a plant in Andhra Pradesh location called Nagri.
Around 40 to 45% of our volume was supposed to come from the the bentonite product in Mandari. That plant actually has been under have to work with government on getting licenses cleared and approvals done. Unfortunately the Gujarat government has interprets some of the NCLC provisions or orders in a slightly different way and we are working with the local government authorities to get aligned on that which is and right now the hindrance in starting the plant up. And that’s actually what’s affecting the remaining part of the business, which was around half that one point 50 crores which we indicated.
We have some challenges on retuning the product line. The markets have obviously changed a little bit and therefore the product composition is slightly different. So we have developed new products in those plants. Those products are actually under customer trials now. Obviously those products are highly focused on the oil and gas market. And given the sluggishness has happened recently and now the crisis now I’m not sure when we’ll actually see a recovery there. But as you go to this year, in the second half of the year right now we hope that basically where we are executing right now on various fronts, we expect that all at least two out of the three plants will be in operations at reasonable volume in the second half of the year.
Just on industrial salt. I think on industrial salt, I think the way I tend to look at this, we supply a lot of our salt goes into South Asia and Southeast Asia. And as you know, in salt the longer you go, the further you go away from India, the less competitive you are. Right. So we sell a lot into where we sell to markets in South Asia for high grade applications where this requirement for initial content is very high, where the customers need to pay a premium for low insolubles, we actually get very good pricing.
But when you go into some of the geographies in China we are competing also with locally manufactured salt and salt comes from other geographies which are geographically far closer to the end market and therefore we get more pressure on pricing because of that. Right. So as you’re trying to. So that was my reference to my earlier comments saying that obviously that there’s competitive intensity, it’s by geography, it’s different. And the competitive intensity needs, geography determines the weighted average of our pricing in our basket.
So there are long term customers that we have not seen price coming down too much because they are, let’s say in Indonesia or closer or there is an application where they need a very high quality salt. But then there are customers who are very far away from India and are ready to use a slightly lower quality salt in their application and there we see more pricing pressure and that’s kind of the balance which is there and that’s what drives broadly the contours of pricing in the market. Okay with that, let me.
And obviously if those, if the geographical demand and then Demand in those geographies of those customers are growing very fast. We see benefits and they’re not growing. We obviously see some impact of that as well. Let me just let Natasha answer the housekeeping bookkeeping question.
Rajeev Kumar
Cash. Cash equivalent. Bank balances 37 crore and consolidated is 55 crore.
Rohit Nagraj
Sure. Thanks for the questions and all the best, sir.
Operator
Thank you. Due to time constraints. That was the last question. I now hand the floor over to the management for closing comments.
Rampraveen Swaminathan
All right, well, thank you everyone for joining us in the earnings call. We appreciate your time and for showing interest in the company. In case of any queries, you can get in touch with our team or with SGI Investor Relations Advisors. We will turn back those questions very quickly. Right. We look forward to meeting all of you over the next call. Just to. As a point of interest, we have scheduled the date for the AGM. Right. Which is on June 12th. And hopefully those of you who are able to make it, we’d love to have some of you members joining us at the AGM as well.
Thank you very much. Take care. Stay safe.
Operator
Thank you very much, sir. On behalf of Arkane Chemical Industries Ltd. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.