Ashapura Minechem Ltd (NSE: ASHAPURMIN) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Sep. 04, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Chetan Shah — Ashapura Minechem Ltd
Ashish Desai — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Naitik Mohata — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Sudhir Bheda — Analyst
Kirtan Mehta — Analyst
Nalin Shah — Analyst
Bhavin Chheda — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Ashapura Mind Cam limited. Q1FY26 earnings conference call as a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star and then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. This conference call may contain forward looking statements about the company which which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not the guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. On the call we have with us Mr. Chetan Shah, Chairman Mr. Manan Shah, Promoter Group Mr. Ashish Desai, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Hemal Shah, Executive Director Mr. Sachin Polke, Company Secretary and President Corporate Affairs.
I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chetan Shah, Chairman, Ashapura Mindchem Ltd. Thank you. And over to you Sir.
Chetan Shah — Ashapura Minechem Ltd
Good afternoon friends. I am Chetan Shah, Chairman of Ashapura Group would like to welcome all of you for joining this earning call which is really a maiden call for Ashapura Group. And I really appreciate all of you for joining this call and giving your time to listen the Ashapura and Ashapura’s the current activities. I have with me our CFO Ashish Desai, our company secretary Mr. Sachin Polke, our Executive Director Amul Shah and also Manan Shah who is from the Promoter group. I’m also very thankful for eight factors for taking us a lot of trouble for organizing this call. So I’m very thankful to them also. Thank you joining for this call. When we discuss about the Ashapura I would like to as we have already circulated our current activities the note with you all along with our quarterly result. And in that notes we have given fair details about our current activities, our future plans. Today I get an opportunity to speak to you about how the Ashapura is working and what is our plans in coming years. If you want like we can divide the Ashapura in two parts. One is the part is that Ashapura India Operation and Ashapura international operations. First, let me start with Ashapura India operations. In 1982, we started with a very modest beginning and company was incorporated and just it was a single product company. We started with bentonite. Today Ashapura has got a very wide mineral portfolio. And we have become from the single product company to multi minerals, multi solutions company. For that few things which I would really like to mention here, our Indian operations. When we have seen that there is a lot of limitations in getting the new mineral resources and also there is a prolonged delay in getting the mining concessions, we have decided that in India we will go for more on the value added mineral products rather than going for the bulk exports. It was very conscious strategy was made and we started implementing this strategy where we are going for more for value rather than volume. And this strategy has worked very well. And the result of that today Ashapura is the largest bentonite producer in India and third largest in the world. From bentonite we are making the bentonite derivatives called bleaching clay. Also we are the largest producer of bleaching clay in India and again third largest producer of bleaching clay in the world. Today our bleaching clay plant has a capacity to produce 200,000 tons. And it is the largest plant in the world located at single locations. Similarly, coming to bentonite, we have the capacity to produce 700,000 tons of bentonite processed bentonite. And that is also at single locations which is the largest again in the world. Similarly, we are the largest producer of kaolin in India. Similarly, we also produce largest producer of industrial ceramic materials. Having the kind of the plant which is called the producing the propanes which is the first plant of its kind in India. And similarly in many other areas. We are leading in the country and also we have recognized as manufacturers or the suppliers in the globally. So this strategy of using the minimum minerals and creating the maximum value has really played a very important role in our Indian operations. We are expanding this Indian operations gradually. And I can say that we are getting a very, very good response for all our the minerals or the mineral added value added products across the globe. Today Ashakura Indian operations are exporting more than 80 countries of their processed minerals or mineral products. And this is very significant. The most important thing is that all our value added products we are using the raw materials which is coming from our own mining source. The proximity between the mines to the plant to the main seaport is all in hundred kilometer radius. Which is a very rare kind of things in anywhere in any part of the world. So this is the biggest advantage what Ashapura has got. And we created such kind of facilities at gradually developing and still putting up the more and more efforts to increase our the product capacity. After talking about the Indian operations we have thought that now the India is. It’s very limited the scope for the Ashapura. We have to grow very fast. And for that we have started looking at the opportunity across the globe. We have tried at the different countries like Oman, Sudan, Egypt, Madagascar and so on. And finally Ashyapura has settled in guinea which is situated on the west coast of Africa. And guinea is the country where the largest bauxite reserves is available in the world. We went to guinea in 2016 and since 2016.
In last 11 years we are working in guinea to get various concessions for mining of bauxite and also iron ore. At the moment we have got three concessions for the mining of bauxite. And our total resource of bauxite is in excess of 700 million tons. And at the same time we also won concessions for mining of iron ore where the reserves are more than 300 million tons. The journey was a long journey for last 11 years. And now we have fairly established in guinea for excavations and export of bauxite as well as iron ore. Coming back to the bauxite, as you have seen that in the last quarters we have exported more than 2 million tons of bauxite. And this is the highest in the history of the company just to doing such volume in the 1/4. And we expect that we will continue this kind of momentum for time to come. Guinea is blessed with the very high quality bauxite and the proximity to the seaport varies from 50km to 120km. We have built three new ports in Guinea. We have built more than 300km of high quality heavy truck kind of roads. And we also built more than hundred kilometers of the mining roads within the mining areas. These concessions are in few square kilometers. So there is a lot of development is required for the infrastructures. Because guinea governments gives you a mining concessions, they don’t provide you any kind of. Any kind of infrastructure support which every mining or mine owner has to provide their own. This is the one reason then we started investing in guinea and we could see almost, you can say the period of eight to nine years. We are continuously investing in this territory and finally now we have started getting some results out of it. Our ports capacity we can handle currently about 16 million tons of bauxite, which we will enhancing our capacity over a time, so that in future it can handle at least about more than 20 million tons of products.
Our mining capacity is also we have increased and so that we can produce minerals to match with our export capabilities. Lately we have done a very strong or you can say long term partnership with some of the Chinese major who have the ability to go for the contract mining, the contract transportation and the handlings. And also they were going to have the investment in these projects so that we can enhance our capacity. And it will remain a long term reliable. Ashapura can remain a long term reliable supplier of bauxite, which we are very ambitious to have a kind of volume to come in next next three years time. Guinea journey was not very simple. We have put a lot of efforts. And today you can say that only one company there is 90% of the business has been done by mostly Chinese company. Ashapura is only one company who have now sustainable kind of standing in Guinea. And now we recognize as supplier of bauxite as well as iron ore. That took us a very long, long journey. Why we selected a kind of a country, you know, for the reason is that we had very limited resources and we had like unlimited ambitions. So it is a very high risk, high reward kind of a territory. We have selected these things. And I can say that as on today, it looks that we are fairly successful in this selection process. We also like to have look at the different minerals. The country is blessed. The guinea is blessed with the few other minerals. But as on today, it is all at on the study levels. Or you can say some more is on academic purpose. We are not that thing. But it gives us a future opportunity to think on this line. So after saying that this for the guinea or after saying for this for the India, the Ashapura is. You know, I just have a few words about the. About our. A very small, very modest success. But there are the few reasons behind this success. One of them is that the value chain what we are creating for which we are depending our own in house minerals. More than 90% of the minerals is from our own mines and it goes to our own processing facilities and ultimately converting into the products. Sometimes the value addition is such. I just give one very simple example that the bentonite. Basically you can say that it’s a $40 fob business. We are converting into the bleaching clay which is more than $400 per ton product. So now we are going for that things. And secondly, we are going for the creating a different options to replace the high value, high value product or high value materials with the low cost products. So this is one of the area where we also focus when I say that in the few things about our success in this business. The second important thing is that we have the state of the art R and D which is spread over about 12 acres of land. And we have more than 75 scientists to work for our R and D centers. These R and D centers give us the support for creating the new products for the new applications. And also how we can rationalize or standardize our costing while producing these kind of products. Lot of our products like Organo Clay, for example Propens, for example the bentonite for the detergent applications, Bentonite for the animal feed applications. These are few examples. This is all the products which has come from our RD sites. Our R and D is one of the very active RD. And I am very proud to say that such kind of RD it’s rare in the size of our size of companies. It is very few companies who has got such kind of setup. This is giving us lot of supports for creating creating the new products and the new value additions. Besides R and D, another important resource which we have that is the human resource. Ashapura have more than 2200 people working on our like they are on our payrolls. They are very strong dedicated teams who based in all our locations. And they are taking care of the business and the business developments. Ashapura’s attrition rate is very low. The tenure of the people is more than 10 years to 15 years in the company. And this is. I can treat that it is one of the most important resource we are having. You can say besides our mineral resource. The human resource is the second important resource we have in Ashapura. And at the same time we follow the good corporate governance and try to create the maximum transparency in our operations in in our. In our declarations in our. All kind of things are happening which is to be made it available at large so that the people can understand the investor can understand. And we also feel very comfortable to declare all the information. So this is the area which are the few things which we feel that these are the part of the Ashapura’s the current story. I once again like to thank you all and if you feel that you have any. Any. Any questions related with the. With the our presentations or our. This is not. Basically we are just looking for that we are not going to get you the numbers where we are going to be in the next or there is no guidance this call only we prefer to introduce our company and to make sure that this company has a very strong future. And the reason is that in the world you know like the kind of company was has such a large. The mineral basket who have so many mineral based solutions for the different kind of applications. Which is interesting which is again it’s a very rare. If you can look at that thing. You know in the mid size of company this kind of things is very rare. And last things which I would like to add that currently the guinea is our major focus area which contributes more than 70% of our revenue on top line and as well as in bottom line. Guinea’s future is associated with the bauxite. And the bauxite is becoming a one of the very rare minerals as the aluminium metals. The consumption of the metals is increasing almost 5 to 6% per annum and it’s going to increase much higher than 5 to 6% in time to come because of the lot of new applications like for. Especially for the EV kind of vehicles for the. Just very recently I was reading about that this. You know the most of the solar panels the frames are made out of the aluminum. The latest research is happening in this aluminium salt batteries which is going to replace gradually but is going to replace the lithium batteries. Aluminum metal is going to remain very strong in demand because of one of the metal is very stable metal and the availability of the raw material is also very stable. So I can feel that. And the guinea luckily we have those of the bauxite. So if you combine all these factors together you can see that the company has a very long term future. So we are not here just discussing the numbers of the quarter or something but we are looking that many more such quarters to happen in future and we really appreciate all our stakeholders or maybe future stakeholders for joining for this call and giving us a lot of encouragements, lot of motivations and lot of inspirations for telling our story to you. So once again please accept my sincere gratitude for attending this call. Now I would like our CFO Mr. Ashid Desai to have few words or to give some numbers to you which you maybe like to have and to appreciate. Thank you.
Ashish Desai — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you once again. Thank you very much. Thank you sir. And good evening friends. Coming to our operational and financial performance in the quarter ended June 30th, 2025 we exported more than 2 million metric tons of Bauxite VIS A VIS 3.37 million metric tons for the full financial year. 25. In quarter 1 of 26 we reported consolidated income from operation at 1355 crore which is a growth of 89.8% year on year. This was primarily driven by our operations in guinea leading to robust sales of bauxite. In fact guinea business accounted for, to be precise 79.3% of our top line in the quarter and we expect this momentum to continue coming to EBITDA. For the quarter it stood at 187.73 crore registering growth of 106.8% year on year. EBITDA margin also expanded by 114 basis point to 13.85%. On the back of operational efficiency and economy of scale, the quarter’s PBT was at 131.84 crore growing 102.5% year on year with PBT margin of 9.73% higher by 61 basis point year on year. And lastly EPS for the quarter stood at 11.5 rupees. Now I would hand over to Manan to talk about our outlook and our long term plan. Thank you. Hi Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today. I would like to share my outlook in the two divisions like mentioned by Chetan Shah. To start with the guinea business, we believe that we will continue to capitalize on our strong reserves and infrastructure in Guinea. As mentioned earlier, we see the growth of aluminium to be around 5 to 6% at least for the next few years and we see that therefore the bauxite demand will also increase to that effect. Bauxite prices are expected to remain stable and China will continue to be the world’s largest consumer. Together these factors give us confidence that our guinea operations will see steady and sustainable growth in the years ahead. At present our port capacity stands at 16 million metric tonnes and we expect to reach 27 million metric tons of port capacity by Q1 FY27. As stated in the note earlier, our target is to export 15 million tons of bauxite by FY2728. In parallel we are also advancing our iron ore business where Asapura has opted for a structured model of supplying mined ore to a local beneficiation plant. This business will gradually ramp up and is expected to contribute meaningfully to the profitability of our guinea business. For India business we have four factors which we see will contribute to our growth. First, we expect a good organic growth itself. The reason for this is that many global supply chains are shifting to a China one strategy and Ashapura is a leading brand and a favorable alternate in this regard. Companies are also looking for alternates to high cost European and American products and this is something that we have been able to develop step by step. We see ourselves capturing a larger share of the global market over time. The second part of this growth will come from capacity enhancements. Many of our existing production capacities are close to full utilization and we are expanding them to meet rising demand while investing in technologies to improve efficiencies. The third area is expansion into high value product lines. We remain focused on technology driven innovation backed by strong and agile research capabilities. Our emerging product portfolio spans industries such as animal care, environmental protection, foundries, paints and coatings. These segments that we aspire to get into are technologically demanding but present significant opportunities for scale and value creation upon commercialization. Lastly, but also equally importantly, our focus remains on resource acquisition. We need to replenish the resources which is used by our company. This is the way to ensure sustainability of long term operations and cost leadership in our segments. This is all from our side and thank you for patiently listening. We would be happy to take any questions that you may have now. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press STAR and then one on their touchstone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Naythik Mohata from C Current Investments. Please go ahead.
Naitik Mohata
Yeah, good afternoon sir and thank you for the opportunity. First of all I would like to congratulate the management, you know to on posting such good set of numbers. It seems like all the hard work over the years is starting to pay off. Also the initiative of earnings call that we have taken is very positive and I hope that we would continue with this in the future as well. My first question would be sir, so we have, we have been investing quite some, quite a lot in guinea in the last four or five years, acquiring these mines, establishing roads and ports for logistic purposes and all. So what would be the total amount that we might have invested till now in the business? Is that the only question? No, I have couple of follow up questions as well. Maybe you could just say them all together, is that okay? Okay, so that would be my first question. The second question would be like with respect to the iron ore mine in guinea, so what is the timeline and what is the progress for iron ore mine there? And you know, how soon can we expect some numbers out of the iron ore mine as well? And lastly the total bauxite that we can extract on the capacities in place right now, what would that look like?
Chetan Shah
Okay, so I’ll take question two and three first and then our CFO can handle the question on the capex. So your first question is regarding to iron ore in case of iron ore. As we have mentioned that we have a strategic agreement with particularly our local beneficiation plant. While numbers are too early to share right now, we see that it would significantly contribute to our bottom line in due course of time while this business is happening close to an X mines rate. So in terms of top line the numbers may not be immediately visible. But over period of time we expect that it will contribute to the bottom line. Currently the business is in stage of last stages of development and should we expect it to start ramping up very soon, maybe in the next quarter or two quarters, some effect of the INR business should be viable. Currently we are not. Currently we are not sharing our long term INR numbers, but in due course of time we shall share those. And regarding to bauxite extraction, if you can understand. So in terms of mining, the limitations do not arise Exactly. In that sense, it requires the roads and the ports also to be equally compliant. Today our port capacity is at 16 million tons and as we have mentioned, we expect this to go to 27 million tons. So you can consider that our port capacity could be a factor in determining what is the maximum potential at any given point of time. But however, however as such, with the kind of reserves we have, we have obviously the opportunity to scale up even beyond that in longer term. Ashish.
Ashish Desai
Yeah, so to answer your question on how much we have invested, so we have already invested more than around 135 million USD as on today.
Naitik Mohata
Okay. So a follow up on that question would be how much would have gone in developing the mind, how much would have gone in developing the ports and currently also what we are planning to expand the port capacity, how much work investing to do that as well.
Chetan Shah
So I think currently the, you know, in the interest of the time on this call, this would be like a very long conversation to have. But we do have, you know, obviously the breakups available with us so we can that can be discussed in due course of time.
Naitik Mohata
All right, sir, thank you. I’ll join back in the queue.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, please limit yourselves to one question each per participant. If you have any other follow up questions, please rejoin the queue. Our next question comes from the line of Giriraj Daga from Visaria Family Trust. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hello Tim. First of all, thanks for ringing the call and I hope this remains the endeavor in future. Also that we can keep hearing the management periodically on the call. My question remains is that in terms of volume, first of all, this is just two part of the one question. First in terms of like this quarterly number to middle and for last year new number mentioned 3.77 billion ton. And our guidance is 15 billion ton by 28. So we should assume a periodic jump from 3 to going to 6, 7 then going to 10, then 15 is the journey. This is this way. And second in terms of a sales tie up, what is the like mix of between spot and long term? What is it? Volume fix, price fix or is price linked to the market price? How is the scenario there?
Chetan Shah
So as we have mentioned that of course there are seasons in the business where typically Q2 is affected by monsoon. But yeah we do expect a somewhat linear growth towards our target. So that’s point one. Second point is that as you mentioned about the long term contract and spot business, the eventual objective is that our long term contracts, the volumes may be fixed but the prices are depending on the index conditions. So eventually the pricing should be in line with whatever the spot prices are as per the China market. So there are no fixed prices going into multiple years as on now in the bauxite contract. So the volume contracts are available but the pricing remains flexible as per market conditions.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, if I can just get some follow up there. What would be our pattern?
Chetan Shah
We are building in at let’s say reasonable number of 7, 8 million ton. So I think the current EBITDA is, I mean it can be calculated from the volume given and the EBITDA given. We have offered our division wise financials in the investor note. You can expect that this EBITDA number could be a little better from here. But the exact guidance will not be available.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, last thing if I can ask what is the remaining capex in guinea now to reach the full potential as of now I can share with you that most of the Capex has been completed and company does not see a lot of significant Capex going ahead. But exact numbers again is tough to calculate. But I think that we have been in guinea since 2016 and after nine long years we are seeing some good results. So we can say that bulk of the Capex has been factored in. Okay, okay, thank you. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Sudhir Beda from Beda family office. Please go ahead.
Sudhir Bheda
Good afternoon sir and I would like to congratulate you in the last year and created the shareholder value and guinea also the way you have performed there. So my hearty congratulations as a shareholder. My question is. My question is what is a plan in terms of your debt? See when the company will become a kind of debt free level. And second, what is the plan of this year? What next of guidance can you give for dispatches for FY26 in bauxite?
Chetan Shah
Okay, so couple of questions. First, we are not offering a yearly guidance which is why we’ve given a clear guidance for FY 2728. Currently we are not offering a yearly guidance but I can say that we expect a linear growth from our numbers now to our targeted numbers in FY27 28. So I think that leaves enough information to kind of broadly make that out out. What can be expected on the second part on the debt, we expect EBITDA levels to be healthy or even get little bit healthier from here which should help us to over a period of time reduce our debt. But like exact guidance on how much our debt may reduce further on those operations is currently not available in India operations, we hardly have any debt or we have no long term debts as such. So we are fairly comfortable.
Sudhir Bheda
Thank you sir for giving the opportunity. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kewal Doshi from Onyx Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations Chetan Bhai and team for a spectacular performance. To understand the ports which we built in guinea, are these ports exclusively being used by us under our control or there are third parties also which have access to these ports?
Chetan Shah
These ports are 100% belong to us, 100% operated by us and 100% utilized for our cargoes. A lot of the capex which has been discussed earlier on this call has gone towards the development of these ports. As we mentioned, 16 million tons of capacity has been added up by us since we ended up in Guinea. And this is also one of the reasons why the project has taken such a long time to bear fruit after inception. But the ports 100% belong to us and we have our complete rights on these ports.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. My next question is that we read from the note that five to six months the ports are. There is extreme rainfall in guinea and therefore there could be disruption. So would it be a complete stoppage of excavation from the port or would it be partially shut? What happens in these six months or five months?
Chetan Shah
Typically there is a, you know, there is some variation in the amount of volumes we are able to execute not just on account of the port itself, but because of the acute rains on the mines, the road and the entire infrastructure. Plus the obviously bauxite gets wet and typically. The wet cargo is less profitable to execute and is also headache for the buyer. So you can expect some disruption but it’s hard for us to predict because it really has lot to do with the amount of millimeter of rain which we are seeing over there. And I think maybe you can have a very approximate correlation to the, you know, to the rains and the kind of volumes which are there because mining is a business and especially in this kind of industry where the rain will directly affect your ability to execute cargo. So we expect some disruption. So I think whatever our targets are would see that, okay, quarter two would always have numbers which would be below the average and then quarter three would see a pickup and quarter four and quarter one would do even better. So typically that’s how I can explain it. But it really depends on the yearly, you know, the rainfall as per the season and the severity of the rain. So it’s very hard for us to predict. But we do try our best to at least execute some volumes even in the off periods or in the monsoon period. So it will not happen that quarter two would see no exports of bauxite for example.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, understood. My next question and probably last is on the India business side, do we expect new products to be introduced and is there any impact which we may have on if at all we are exporting to the US currently Ashabura, I could say less than a fraction of a percentage of our exports from India and no exports from guinea are to usa.
Chetan Shah
So there is, I would say beyond negligible or below negligible impact of U.S. tariffs. That’s one. So there is no impact of that on our company. Regarding to our new product developments. We are very excited, excited and very passionately bringing in, as my father explained in his speech, the cost beating innovations for variety of material industries such as paints, coatings, foundries, animal feed, animal care, environmental protection. But these are projects which obviously will play out over a medium to longer term in terms of the company size.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you so much Manan for answering all the questions and wishes you and the entire team all the very best. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kirtan Mehta from Baroda BNP Pariba Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Kirtan Mehta
Thank you sir for giving this opportunity. One question related to our mining business in guinea. Based on the Q1 numbers given appears that the our bauxite realization has been closer to around $65 whereas EBITDA is around 10 $11, implying around $55 of bauxite product production and transportation cost. Could you give us bit more insight into our cost elements in terms of what is the mining cost, what is the transportation cost, what are the port operation costs and on the realization side, you previously mentioned that we have index pricing. How much proportion actually is in under a long term contract and what is generated on the spot contract and who are our key buyers. If you can give some insight around the bauxite business, that would be useful.
Chetan Shah
Sure. So I will not be able to share with you very specific information currently, but I can tell you that typically the mining cost is the very small part of the total cost. Typically in this entire thing. The mining cost may be hardly a few percentage points of the total cost. The major cost is the transportation which happens from the mines to the port and then from the port via Cape sized vessels to our end users, mostly in China. That is a significant part of the total cost. Yeah. So that includes barging transhippers, if any. And then finally the actual freight of the cargo being carried from guinea to China. So majority of the cost involved is all related to logistics and can be a function of the performance of various sea routes in terms of how their pricing is faring is one of the basic impact of that. So that the costing is majorly on the logistics and logistics management side, which is predominantly what is on the costing regarding to your question. And there are some taxes also in terms of to the government which has to be paid as royalties on the export. So that also exists. So that is also some percentage of the total cost regarding to the index pricing. So the our pricing will always be linked to the index, but whether it’s a premium or penalty depends customer to customer based on the grade of bauxite which they would be buying and the kind of moisture which is in the material. But you can understand that our EBITDA would have some correlation to index prices.
Kirtan Mehta
Right. This is quite useful. And if you can also sort of suggest how the cost would change as we increase our operations, how much it can come down with the increase in the size of operations.
Chetan Shah
So I would give a broad based answer on that. Basically as you can understand that Ashapura is working with reputed partners to strengthen its infrastructure chain and Ashapura has a target to significantly increase its volumes. I think both those initiatives put together should see some more efficiency being unlocked. But it would be too soon for me to give a very specific number. But you can understand from our guidance that we significantly want to ramp up the kind of the volumes which we are doing today. And so therefore there would be some amount of increase in efficiency from economies of scale and as well as working with the very established partners who have their own efficiencies in handling infrastructure and logistics.
Kirtan Mehta
Sure, sir. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nalin Shah from NVS Brokerage. Please go ahead.
Nalin Shah
Congratulations for excellent numbers. I think most of the questions which were in my mind has been covered already in the discussions. Only thing I would like to just ask whether any kind of acquisitions.
Operator
Sorry to interrupt. Mr. Shah, you’re sounding a bit muffled and low. If you can just speaker.
Nalin Shah
Hello, Am I, am I audible now?
Operator
This is much better, sir. Please go ahead.
Nalin Shah
Yeah, yeah. So I just only would like to know if there are any strategies or for unlocking of value what we are considering. Is there any strategy or anything on the card in terms of, you know, acquisitions and inorganic growth as well as any, you know, like demerger or something which can create further value for the company, if you can throw some light on that.
Chetan Shah
Currently our company’s focus remains on bringing in continued momentum to our guinea business. And as mentioned in India we are developing new product segments. We are open to all opportunities of acquisitions or any other kind of strategic activities. However, our management focus is on the growth of both guinea and India business as they stand for the time being.
Nalin Shah
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bhavin Chera from INAM Holdings. Please go ahead.
Bhavin Chheda
Yeah. Good afternoon, sir. Just few on the guinea mines as you have given in your investor note. I believe you are having three concessions. So are all these. Can you also give the mine life or the concession period? And are all these three concessions or three mining areas currently operational? Because your 700 million reserves seems to be spread over three mines of OODA, BofA and Faco.
Chetan Shah
Okay, good question. So we have basically a 15 years plus 15 years renewable lease on these assets and then those are also of course, 30 years later. I’m not sure what I can predict after 30 years, but our contract is for 15 plus 15 on these mines and two of these mines are operational as mentioned in our note, and one is under development. So that status still stands. And the first 15 years starts from 2016, so renewal will come in 2030. So, so it is almost two years, just two years past it. So in it see we have acquired the different minds at different points of time. But we, we entered guinea in 2016 and our first mines acquisition was much, much later. So most of these mines would be having got the right of exploitation maybe before two or maximum three years. So you can, you can add it up from there.
Bhavin Chheda
Sorry, so do you mean only two, three mines are two, three years, 20 years away? So the. Yeah, the first renewal would be 12 years away and that is also an automatic renewal kind of a system. It’s not like that, it is like a reset process and that’s what we have currently.
Chetan Shah
Yeah.
Bhavin Chheda
And my last question, one thing I would like to add here for the benefit of all those on the call is that guinea has seen large MNCs and you can find out about this yourself, which are working there for at least period of 50 years.
Chetan Shah
So guinea actually offers lot of stability to those who have invested into the country, into the mining assets. So many of the big MNCs have been operating there for several, several years, way beyond 15, 20 or 30 years and they still continue to operate comfortably. So the idea is that the mining concessions are truly in spirit with us and we can use them for a very long period of time.
Bhavin Chheda
Sure. And the last question, the mining operation is done by the local contractor as well as the port management is done by the Chinese contractor or the contractor or we have a team in place which is doing any of these two operations.
Chetan Shah
So currently all the operations across mining and port are handled by the Ashapura team.
Bhavin Chheda
Okay, thank you. Thank you and best of luck. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Ronald Dalal from Picom family office. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi, thank you for taking my question and congratulations on the numbers. Am I audible? Yes. So my first question was that, you know, what would be the bauxite price presently and how would we be able to track it? You mentioned that China bauxite price, so would that be the China guinea bauxite index?
Chetan Shah
See the current current bauxite price is 74.$5 per ton dry metric ton basis C and F China. So that that all depends upon the. There is the international index. You know there’s a one index is produced by from the Australian company and there is a three index used by the Chinese company. Yeah. Or the. Yeah. And normally they take the average of the three index and to make the. The kind of price calculations. So currently it is a $74.5 C&F China. Any major port in China.
Unidentified Participant
Sure. The next I want to just much greater than the supply. So what would be the reason that we’re not able to supply you know say the full 15 to 16 million tons as of today.
Chetan Shah
So company is in a basically a position of ramping up its. You know, its infrastructure and in terms of the roads, the port and like this. So it basically some of these assets have been ready earlier, some of these have been ready more recently. And also we basically there is a process of development also of a mine where on the first day or on the first year you cannot expect that the full volumes would be available on the first year. I think it’s just a question of time that certain things take time to develop to a certain stage. So I think it’s just a journey that we are making. What is important to note is that the capital investment and requisite sort of agreements all are in place and now we see that the momentum to continue and the shipping lines are also available like I mean the ships and all are available for supply because sometimes the shortage of ships. So there is a there the ships are easily available in a summary and there is an index for this also for tracking the sea freights which is available. I currently don’t have the exact name with me but for these specific routes there are indexes available and vessels are available. Yeah. Normally we follow the C3 the shipping route and that is that starts from the Brazil and it’s to end into China. So we follow the same the C3 routes. And if you look at that C3 routes the today current shipping freight will be about $24 per ton. So the one thing I would like to advise is that these indexes give us a kind of trend in terms of whether prices are increasing or decreasing. But their ex prices may have only some correlation to our prices. It may not be literally that the index price may be exactly our price. Our price may be higher or lower depending on the exact customer, exact location and the terms of delivery. But this gives you an indication what is the mood of the particular index or market when you check out whether it is the bauxite pricing index or the shipping indexes, it will offer you a kind of mood in the or the trend in which things are moving.
Operator
One thing that. Sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt Mr. Dalal. May we request to return to the question queue for follow up question as there are several other participants waiting for their turn. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, we request you to restrict yourselves to only one question and please rejoin the queue for follow up questions. Our next question comes from the line of viral Nagata from Vivid Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks. Thanks a lot for arranging this call. Much needed for the investors and I would like to congratulate the management for building a strong business in Guinea. My first question comes about the company that we have that as you have guided that 15 million ton export we are expecting in FY28. Now I need to understand what is the roadmap for this and how are we going to overcome the issues of logistics for barges like barges availability or all those things. So I just want a roadmap or a viewpoint how are we going to overcome those things?
Chetan Shah
I think we have iterated this in the earlier questions that we are expecting some sort of a lease progression from where we are today to the target that we have put. So that’s the first question and regarding to logistics and barging I think as explained or as I would like to explain that now that we have very good quality partnerships with leading marine logistics players we expect that that should take care of the situation. So we have got three years contracts with them. Of course like I mentioned earlier that the contracts are solely based on volume, pricing remains dynamic but we have contracts with and this offers us some stability on our ability to execute volumes.
Unidentified Participant
Understood Sir, Last one question, just want to understand a little bit on EBITDA per turn or margins part as we saw in last two quarter like Q4 and Q1 margins volumes were quite good but the margins were not that. I am talking about margin percentage, EBITDA margin that were not impressive as expected. What is the EBITDA per turn or breakeven point in dollar term Approximately See approximately break even the current EBITDA is available to you through calculation from the numbers.
Ashish Desai
At this point I can only comment that we expect to maintain or improve these numbers in time to come.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, can we expect margins to get better with the volumes going ahead in Q3. Q4.
Ashish Desai
We hope for the best.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thanks a lot. And just one small thing. If possible please provide monthly export or volume numbers that would be much more helpful to us as investors. That’s it. Thank you. Thank you sir.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of BR Nahar from Millie Emerging Equity Fund. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for giving the opportunity and artist, congratulations on arranging this first maiden call. My question is about you are operating currently two mines and in your March presentation you have given that you have entered into contract with China Rail for developing another mine. So whether the volume of that mine which is going to be operated by China Rail is in addition to what you have projected 1516 million tons by 2728, that is on bauxite side and on iron ore mine side whether what kind of FE you have there currently and after beneficiation what kind of FE you will get and whether you will be done exporting or what kind of arrangements you have. Got it.
Chetan Shah
So okay, I. What I can understand two questions. One is on the China railway what we expect is that they are basically partnering us in one of our mines location to improve the capacity that we are able to execute from this mine. So in the existing mines there’s the working with them will help us to significantly improve the volumes that we can deliver from one of our mines. And regarding to your second question on iron ore we have basically like a middle grade iron ore but this iron ore is easily beneficial so I mean it can be easily upgraded via standard washing and related processes. So that’s why we are working with a local beneficiation plant because once it is upgraded it is more profitable to export than to export low grade Oregon but that that I don’t know will you will be exporting or what is the arrangement? Basically if you can, our contract is local, local sales. So we would, we would be working closer to our mines level and lesser at an export level.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you. All the best sir. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to paucity of time that will be the last question for today. For any further questions, please reach out to Add Factor’s team. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Chetan Shah
Thank you so much. We would like to thank you sincerely for your time and patience. We look forward to your trust and support. As we move forward in this exciting phase of our journey of value creation, sustainability and leadership, we are committed to maintain consistent engagement with our stakeholders. We have begun to provide more structured insights into our business divisions and operations going forward. Our disclosures will include quarterly volumes of bauxite from our guinea business along with division wise details as a part of our enhanced investor engagement initiatives. We have recently circulated our first Investor Note from providing concise overview of our operations and business structure. We look forward to strengthening this dialogue further through our quarterly calls and other platforms of interaction. Thank you once again and we look forward to our continued association. For any further details, please reach out to AD Factors. Thank you everyone.
Operator
Thank you on behalf of Ashapura mindcam limited that concludes the conference call. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.