India Glycols Ltd (NSE: INDIAGLYCO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 11, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Nitin Avasti — Moderator
Rupark Sarswat — Chief Executive Officer
Anand Singhal — Chief Financial Officer
S. K. Shukla — Head – Liquor Business
Ankur Jain — Head Legal & Company Secretary
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Balasubramanian — Analyst
Sakeet Kapoor — Analyst
Rohit Modi — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
SA. SA. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to India Glycols Limited Q1FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Incred Equities. 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 then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nitin Avasti from Incred Equities. Thank you. And over to you, Mr. Avasti.
Nitin Avasti — Moderator
Thank you. Good evening everyone. Firstly, I would like to thank the management for giving us this opportunity to host their conference call today. And also congratulate them on a good set of numbers. We are joined on this call with the India Glycols management represented by Mr. Rupak Saratas Saraswat, who is the CEO Mr. Anand Singhal, the CFO. Mr. Rajesh, the head of sales and marketing of the BSPC segment. Mr. S.K. shukla, head of the liquor business and Mr. Ankur Jain, head legal and company secretary. I would now like to invite Mr. Rupak to initiate the proceedings with his opening remarks post which we shall open the floor for Q and A session.
Thank you. And over to you, sir.
Rupark Sarswat — Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. Good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us. A small hygiene point. Can you hear me reasonably?
operator
Yes, sir.
Rupark Sarswat — Chief Executive Officer
Okay. My legal people keep complaining that I sit away from the mic. So you know, we have uploaded two versions of the presentation. So before you start getting confused about it, you can look at either. There was just two minor points which are in the latest version which in terms of uploading, you know, the prior one got uploaded. So even if you have printed the earlier one or if you looked at the earlier one, there is no major change. You need not bother. But obviously you might see two presentations getting uploaded. I thought I’ll clarify so that there is no confusion.
And so as you know, we will talk about briefly the performance of the company. You know. So Ankur, so we had a good quarter as you know. So we’ve had a strong performance for the quarter with a net revenue which is up 7%. More importantly, the EBITDA growth is very strong at 18% and PAT growth is at 21%. So you’ve seen a gross revenue go up from 2,283 to 2500 crores, 10% up. Net revenue 1040 from 9,697% up. EBITDA 151 from 128 18% up and PAT up to 73% from 60, 73% up. From a margins perspective also it has been good.
So our EBITDA margins are up 128 basis points. PAT margins are up 80 basis points. In terms of the revenue growth, I think we are very happy to report great growth in both the portable spirits and the biofuel segments. It has been a weaker kind of quarter for chemicals and nature Biopharma. But when you look at chemicals, while the overall margin growth is actually better than the weakness in the sales growth and in terms of percentage margins or the mix, we’ve seen improvement both in portable spirits as well as BSPC and as I will tell you a little later, the joint vent performance has also been very good which has contributed to the overall results.
To summarize, in terms of net revenue, our biofuels top line is up by 45% to 348 crores. Our portable spirits revenue is up by 22% to 342 crores. Nature Biofarmide 51 crores and chemicals or BSPC stands at 300 crores. So EBITDA margins have increased to 17.7% to be precise to 151 crores from 128 crores. And as I mentioned that has expanded by 128 basis points. For portable spirit, our EBIT margins have improved from 17.5% to 21%. For chemicals, our EBIT margins have expanded from 9.9% to 10.9%. Of course there are several factors, but from an operating business the EBITDA margin improvement in chemicals has been better.
Our pack stands at 73 crores with margins at 7% against 6.2% last year. And we’ve had a very good increase in terms of the profit that we post from the joint venture which is up 73.7% year on year to 19 crores from 11 crores. In terms of overall financials I have more or less highlighted them so I will not go through the entire sheet. Several other points with respect to financial parameters I will ask my colleague our CFO Mr. Singhal to talk to you about later. At a high level, I think we’ve continued to see a solid performance in country liquor which is a good part of our portable spirits business.
And we continue to be both reputed and a robust business. With Buntee Bubbly being recognized as the highest selling any brand of liquor in the country. Despite being a strong shareholder in Uttarakhand and up, we have increased our shares in Uttarakhand’s marginally and we kind of maintained our close leadership position which we’ve had in qp. We’ve talked about it before. Our Amrut partnership has been gaining momentum. I think we’ve settled down in terms of getting that partnership going and we are starting to see good momentum in up, Uttarakhand, Delhi and we are increasing our focus on premium brands.
And one of the important objectives for us this year is also to enter the CSC which is canteen services department within the chemical space. I will talk a little bit about the businesses but from a highlight perspective we have a new value added performance chemicals business which is still small but just to let you know that that is growing very well and we are quite confident of the business pipeline that we’ve put in place. In fact in select areas we are doing incremental capacity expansion and I think the indicators from our perspectives are that this will continue to drive growth in the quarters and years to come.
For the joint venture also there was very strong sales growth, excellent growth numbers. I think several factors have helped. One is that there has been a reduction in the yield price gap vis a vis Reliance and we achieved much higher cap numbers earlier. And the JV obviously also has been focusing on what products they can bring from Clarient worldwide to position them in the Indian market which is the imported products. That portfolio has increased and also increased helped in increased margins in general. Manufacturing in Kashipur also continues to focus on more innovation, more formulations, more value added products.
And I think that strategy is more or less in terms of the plan. And I think we’ve come back from tough situations over the last few years a couple of years ago to the JV starting to look neat and tidy and doing well. And so from a sales perspective I think JV sales are also up in double digits. EBITDA is up in high double digits well in excess of that. And as you know the 12th of August 2025 has been fixed as a record date for determining the entitlements of eligible equity shareholders for the purpose of subdivision split of equity shares of the company.
And I think these are areas which Anandji will talk about later. Let me give you a high level input on our segmental performance for our chemicals business or performance chemicals business. You know our top line has not done so well. It has been a weak quarter and I will talk about it a little later. So our turnover is down to about 300 crores whereas for the biofuels business it is up from 239 to 348 crores with EBIT margins of 6.5%. Chemicals business has EBIT margins of 10.9% for the portable spirits business. Top line up to 34842 crores from 280 crores and EBIT margins up from 17.5% to 21.1%.
For NHA Biopharma, margins have been under pressure and sales have been weak and so have been the margins for this business. So we have some amount of portfolio shift that has been happening. So you see that compared to other segments, the portable spirits business and the biofuels business have taken a larger share both in terms of revenue or EBIT in this year, which is more or less in line with our expectations. But we do think we have a strategy in place which is working for the chemicals business as well as the nature biopharma business. So let me start by talking about the chemicals business.
So we achieved a 300 crore top line with an EBITDA of 50 crores margin expanded 100 basis points of 10.9%. I mentioned to you about performance chemicals and the strong growth by the joint venture. We sell ethyne oxide into the joint venture. Some of the areas in the chemical segment have been under pressure while we continue to sell. Like all the niche markets, the gap with respect to crude based MIG has increased which means while there is still interest for green energy. But if the gap continues to be high, there is increased pressure. Crude prices have been lower which means crude based MEG prices have been lower.
The demand for pet, pet rate and etc. Has been softer. Having said that, I think we at a more longer term level we continue to believe that MEG will continue to see steady growth. More importantly, greener Megs, of which plant based MEG is one part, is expected to see double digit growth over the period of time. In the portable spirits business our revenue is up to 342 crores up 22.4%. EBIT at 72 is up 47.4% and margins are up at 21.1%. We have been focusing since last year on the partnership with Amrut because that gives us an opportunity to look at premium brands and acquire some brands which Amrut had not been focusing on as they focus more on their single malts and it allows us to move up the value chain.
Our focus so far has been up Utrakhand and Delhi and we have now included Amrut Prestige Whiskey which also in addition to others we shall be adding to manufacturing, bottling and marketing that IGL shall be doing for these brands. On a I spoke to you about strong performance in country liquor with our flagship brand Bunty Bubbly continuing to be the highest selling any liquor brand in India for three consecutive years. In a newer segment that we had entered last year we’ve seen strong growth which is the paramilitary segment where we have strengthened our sales position and Verizial now supplies five brands and is amongst top four suppliers out of the 66 companies that had participated.
We have also introduced some of our brands in house brands like Zumba, Lemoni, Amazic Vodka in Kerala which we considered a high potential market and also a market where we would like to increase sales for some of these relatively premium brands. We continue to hold leadership position as I mentioned in country liquor NFL I mentioned that before. We’ve spoken about the biofuel strategy before. I think it is something that we take some satisfaction in. Many of you have been attending our calls for the last three plus years when we’ve been speaking about the biofuel segment.
So by and large I think the government strategy to blend biofuels starting from whenever 2017 onwards has been very robust. It has more or less gone as the plan. In fact the initial plan of blending 20% ethanol was to be there by 2030. That was three point to 2025 and as far as I know we are well on Track to deliver 20%. Now when we say 20% blending does not mean that 20% is happening throughout the country. There are some portions for example in Northeast where but it means that in several big states up to 20% blending has been achieved.
An empowered set of personnel from Ministry along with Niti Ayog is looking at enhancing the blending to anywhere between 25 to 30% by 2030. There are times that to some extent government is likely to move that forward, but I think we’ll wait for the final call. Which essentially means that the biofuels business is expected to continue to grow one because of increased consumption, second because of increased penetration across the country and thirdly if there is an increased blending mandate and the more India looks at energy independence, I think that is one more added factor to continue to drive this forward.
Looking also at forex outputs, the NHA biopharma segment broadly has two big molecules, thiocolgicoside and nicotine and various derivatives of them. Both them have been facing some challenges primarily because of slowing demand in terms of the developed country market particularly goes via Turkey into EU Nicotine demand is there but there’s also capacity and there are number of new entrants that is putting margin Pressure but broadly the strategy of the company has been to continue to come with differentiated products, purity, impurity, profiling, continue to get regulatory approvals to participate in developed markets like us, Europe, Japan.
We made good progress in that area. Continue to look at our formulations and the branded portfolio. So why is the business. This particular business has been under pressure but I think the broad strategy has been very clear. We will continue to maintain the market but look at differentiation, registration, then regulatory qualifications, branded and formulated products to drive this business forward. You’ve all heard about restructuring. I’ll just talk about the rationale. You are aware of it and I think greater details if you have any questions on it actually will tell you. So broadly the idea has been to look at our businesses to enhance value.
The idea is to put together portable spirits business and the ethanol or the biofuel business together into one business which will be called Izeal Spirits. To put the chemicals business, value added chemicals business and the Clarion JV into one cluster. Clarion JV as in because that sells chemicals and the profit from the joint ventures come into that entity and to put NHL Biopharma along with the biopolymers business into another business. The idea is that different investors have different appetites for different kind of businesses. So that gives us an opportunity to write these businesses with different strategies satisfying how different investors may have interested different businesses.
Whilst we will continue to build on some synergies that we have because of the proximity of our plants and the integration of our business models that exist. There are some numbers to share which have already been shared. I will take a pause here and things that I may have missed out particularly on the financial front because I have just given a very high level overview. I will request Anandji to dive into some more details and take more questions.
Anand Singhal — Chief Financial Officer
So I think the results are already with all the investors. And just to read out the brief on the consolidated basis I think the CEO sir has already briefed the EBITDA visa vist Q1 in the current quarter is almost about 19% up amounting to 151 crores. Visa vis 128 crore in Q1 last year the fat is 73 crores. Visa vis 60 crores in Q1 in the last year which is up by 21%. And the EPS for the current quarter is 23 rupees 66 paisa which is again up by 21% in the last quarter last year for Q1.
So this is very brief. I am giving and ready to take the question answer because I am not taking much time. I will request to start the question answer session.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your touchstone telephone. 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’ll wait for a moment while the question queue is separate. The first question is from the line of Balas Subramaniam from Aryan Capital Markets Ltd. Please proceed.
Balasubramanian
Good evening sir. Congratulations for a good set of numbers. Sir, my first question. In the portable spread side I think we have seen a highest selling brand of Pandy Papdi. I just want to understand how this dominance is sustainable. And secondly, we are focusing on especially in Delhi, Haryana and targeting paramilitary and CST channels and how these channels are picking up. And thirdly in the amood side we are targeting 850rupees 2000 in that range for brands and how these things are getting adaptable in the market. And finally if you could share what is that breakup between IMFL and country approximately that would be fine.
Rupark Sarswat
So Bala, thank you. You’ve given us a question paper. I have my colleague Rajuji here. But I’ll. I’ll try and answer just the first one which is to go with multiple group and I will request. Is there. Are you there?
S. K. Shukla
Yes, yes I am here. Hello.
Rupark Sarswat
So their question was how have you managed to be number one in Bunty Bubbly and how do you think that will be sustained? So I would request you to respond that I was not sure whether we are there. So. Yeah please. And then I think you and Raju you can take the remaining.
S. K. Shukla
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So Bunty Bubbly is the brand which came in the picture 2006 and after 2006 because we are growing this with the brand approximately 15 to 20% every year. And the peculiar character of this brand is made from the rose and lime which be more comfortable to the drinkers. So that’s why we have the. In the country liquor segment the liquor is in three category. 25°, 36° and 42.8 volume by volume strength and in all strength this brand is the most favorable brand because customers liking growing day by day. And our size is currently approximately we are holding more than the 24 to 25% the share.
And amongst this share is brand is around 16%. So this is the undoubtedly most favored brand in the country liquor segment. Especially in up. Raju ji, over to You.
Unidentified Speaker
Hello, I’m Raju Bhani speaking. The next question. I’ll come to the point straight away. The next question was on Delhi and paramilitary and other segments. How are we growing? See, Delhi is a very safe market as far as payments are concerned. It’s well known. And Delhi we. I take satisfaction in mentioning that we are in three segments in particular. One is the regular segment where our Soulmate Blue is among the top three brands in the. In the state of Delhi and we command that position for the last so many years. We have a license in Delhi for the last 25 years.
So in other words, IGL is a prominent player in Delhi market. Second is, this is the segment of vodka again among. We are among the top three brands. There are more than 35 brands in Delhi of vodka. But we are among the top three brands of vodka in the state of Delhi. This is because of the fact that we use imported enhancers which cost a little bit more. But the consumer shifts from other regular vodkas to our vodka and once he or she ships from the regular vodkas, he or she stays with us. We are increasing at an increasing rate in terms of market share.
So this is the vodka segment, the third segment. In fact, you, you clubbed it well with the third question, if I may say. That’s 850 and thousand rupees segment. See, these are the two segments which are galloping. Galloping in the sense, you know, the consumer is all the time very aspirational and all the time moving upwards and going up, trading up the price ladder. So we, you know, it is very difficult to establish whiskey brand in this premium price point. This is with reference to Delhi, as you rightly said. These are the price points of Delhi market.
So you know, this segment is growing in high double digit digits. And there was every reason for us to address this because of two reasons. One is our extra neutral alcohol which goes to Diageo Perno Radical name the top big big companies world over. It is used by all of them. So there was every reason for us to use it for our captive consumption. And we have, as our CEO rightly said, we have in conjunction with Amrut taken certain brands on royalty. So we have made two, two brands. One is Macintosh white label which is at 850 and one is Macintosh black label which is at 1100.
These two segments are growing and we are able to capitalize on the growth and we are able to get more than 10, 10 market share. We have not even completed one year of its launch and it is quite satisfying that we have more than 10% market share. Now as far as your third question or partially third question was paramilitary as our CEO rightly mentioned there were 66 companies. This is the annual contract for and just to elucidate for the benefit of everyone paramilitary means itbp, bsf, CRPF and ssb. So these are the. These are the four arms of the defense forces which are paramilitary which complement they.
They. They fend the internal I.e. india Operation army fends the borders. That is the difference. So they are under Ministry of Home affairs and they do an annual contract which is generally extended for one more year. So the effective it is two year contract. It is noteworthy that out of 66 company who tendered less than half of them got approval including IGL. And we are the number four company already in India. And just to mention that this is an all India all India supplies. So it has a snowballing effect on the civil sales as well.
So this keeps us in good stead as far as our. Our long term pursuit of going national is concerned because we are able to feed as many as as our co. Right. Rightly mentioned five brands across our price spectrum that we have got into the entire country. I can talk more about it. I will be very glad to field any other question.
Balasubramanian
Thank you for detailed explanations. In that biofuel segment what is the capacity utilization at this point of time? And we have seen the revenue growth is much much better but we have seen some margin contractions. Are we facing on that raw material side any issues how we dependent on domestic mice supply and is there any risk on the gross margin side if corn adopt faces any regularity hurdles.
Rupark Sarswat
So Bala, let me try and take that. And then if there is something else then Suklaji may add. So your question was with respect to the biofuel segment and whether there is a margin squeeze there or whether there is a raw material issue. The short answer is there is no raw material issue. There were some hiccups last year more to do with internal arrangements. There are multiple sources which the government has allowed which includes sugarcane juice, C heavy molasses, B heavy molasses rice which is DFT damaged food grain rice surplus food grain as well as corn.
And you know it is not a completely free market kind of system because the government has come up with very well through thought, through administrative price mechanism they recognized what the various feedstocks costs are. And accordingly if you see different prices are given for ethanol which is produced for using different feedstocks to make sure that there is balanced growth. There are so Many factors to be balanced. There is agricultural factors, there are climatic factors, there is factors to do with MSP, factors to do with excess food and storage, etc. And in terms of gross margins, as you know, there are three factors which lead to the money that we make in the biofuel space.
One is the administered price. Second is the cost of the grain which is used, which is for our case either damaged food grain, DFG or surplus footprint. And the fourth factor is at what price are we able to sell DDGs, which is the byproduct containing protein. So like we continue to look at the overall profitability that we get, the government also continues to look at that. It is a flagship program for the government. So it’s very important that people who have invested continue to support this program. So what we have seen ever since we have participated in the market, there have been times when margins go up, margins come down a little bit.
But the regulatory bodies play a significant role in making sure, with respect to availability of feedstock, with respect to adjustment of prices, which they have done from time to time, that by and large a steady, decent margin, not necessarily steady in the shorter term is made. And I have no reasons to believe that that will go away. Now we also keep track of overall capacities that the country has. So the country has put up capacity, but we don’t have excess capacity compared to the total demand. You know, demand will continue to grow and people will continue to add steady capacity, but there is no huge, you know, excess capacity which will impact it.
So to answer your question, we are not in a situation where suddenly you see a glut because of either wrong traders are not available, or suddenly because of market factors, prices collapse. Prices are determined by the government. The government takes several supporting actions to make sure feedstocks are available. So while there is some level of uncertainty on all businesses, and to some extent you may say that, you know, at times we may think that we could make more money, but this is a more steady, reasonably supported business backed by a national bank. You know, it’s not the ending program and at least I don’t have undue concerns.
And I have definitely spoken to you about this for the last three and a half years. And at times I was a little conservative, which also some people did not like. But at the same time I was reasonably confident that this is not just a splash in the pan. This is a well thought through agenda which the government has executed quite well. And I think industry players have come up to support that and deliver it throughout the country. Quite well and if you look at how the blending has gone up in the country from something like 5% in 1920 to 10% in 2021 to 10% in 2122 there was a hiccup to 12% in 2023 to 15% in 2024 to 19% in 2425 and we are expecting to do 20% in 2526 which mind you is ahead of the original plan of delivering this by 2030.
So I would not be overly concerned and I would request you not to be only concerned.
Balasubramanian
Got it sir, my last question.
operator
May we request you to join the question queue again as there are other participants.
Balasubramanian
Okay, thank you sir. Thank you ma’ am
operator
thank you. The next question is from the line of Saket Kapoor from Kapoor and company Please proceed.
Sakeet Kapoor
Thank you for this opportunity sir. So firstly sir, with now Q1 through and we have the remaining 3/4 so as an organization what are our key operational and financial agendas or the thought process of the management for this current year? Because I think so Finance cost is the area that that needs attention and what steps are we taking to to reduce the impact of the same? My first question secondly on the capex part last year we did around 750700 crores odd number what has been envisaged for the current year and what are the current maturities which are payable for the current financial year.
Unidentified Speaker
So Saket, after we answer your questions hopefully you’ll buy some more ideal shares. Yes sir he’s already invested yes no that was on a lighter note so go ahead.
Anand Singhal
Regarding the finance cost Saket as such as of now we are not planning to raise equity or something that is. That is always in the pipeline always from last 7, 8 years but since inception 1989 the company has not done any public issue so yes that finance cost is in our also mine that that is increasing and we will certainly check that Number two regarding the capex we are not planning to do any huge capex in the current year so hopefully the current year capex will be the rollover capex which are coming from the last year or maybe maintenance capex which will be say about 40 to 50 crore per year so we are not targeting any big size capex this year and we will like to consolidate and after the demerger the separate companies will think over the capex and regarding the financial performance, what you said so I think the Q1 number is already indicating about the financials of the company when the company has already achieved 23 rupees 66 paisa EPS so rest you can you can think of on your own.
I cannot give you the numbers and the projections because that is not allowed but you yourself can can rather guess what will be the financial numbers of the company.
Sakeet Kapoor
My question was mainly towards the trajectory part since lot of capex has gone through. So as you mentioned that our key agenda should be how to sweat those assets and create value out of it. So that was the premise of the question. And for the current year sir, what are the current maturities? How much is payable and are we going to pay through the internal accruals?
Rupark Sarswat
Whatever capacity is going on that has already been funded so we are not targeting any fresh loan and whatever the maintenance capexes will be there that will. Be from the internal approvals
Sakeet Kapoor
current maturity. Sir, how much of the loan is due for repayment for this year?
Anand Singhal
Repayment will be about 300 crores and.
Sakeet Kapoor
This will be through the cash accrual Sunday we will be lowering the debt by the debt tune for this year.
Anand Singhal
Hardly any debt will be will be there maybe 100, 150 crores but here 325 is the figure which is payable which will be paid out of the cash accruals.
Sakeet Kapoor
Right sir and said now coming to. The JV performance I think so the JV performance have been very good if you take the Q on Q number and last year the contribution was closer to 47cr and this this the first quarter itself it is now 19 crore so what factors actually rip did mention but if you could allude more man describe more onto the same and the and the continuity or of the same su of the thing what should be factored in?
Rupark Sarswat
Okay, so Saket I mentioned a couple of points. One is that we had faced a challenge where the cost differential between reliances and ideals EO had gone up to as high as 42% in around mid of 23July August. Now that really came down to close to 12 to 14% in the quarter and that was the highest that we had seen which was 42%. In fact if you go back prior to you know mid of 22 or before that for 5, 1015 years never had been seen something like this which was pre Covid times. Manish is that reasonable? In fact if at all IGL zeo cost was slightly lower than Alliance’s EO sales price.
So the good thing is that we have tided over the biggest obstacle of as high as a 42% differential and we are down to operating in the 12 to 15% range. We have no reasons to believe that it is going up to fundamentally to those high level. That is one. So that has contributed in improving margins, getting more sales. And I think we have been able to not only sustain but drive our sales growth. That has contributed. The second thing as I mentioned, it also improved trading. So when we formed a joint venture Clarient had a trading business in India.
When I say trading business in India they don’t buy products from everybody and sell it. I mean products that are manufactured in Clarient and sold in India through the Indian entity. And that business was put into the joint venture that a joint venture will do that part. Which means that we have access to several technologies manufactured products throughout the clariant world which are sold into India which also improved both the percentage margin as the absolute margin. This was the second factor. The third factor has been enhancement of the product mix within what is manufactured in Kashipur.
Some actions taken from here. Some actions also taken because there is greater access to Clarion’s application. Know how you know the product chemistry on the table bouquet so to say. So these are factors. Given that these are factors and given the end markets that the joint venture services we should know right from personal care, pharma, crop care, textiles, lubricants, coatings, etc. Which are also growing. There are reasons for us to believe that there were fundamental reasons for the JV to start doing well. The challenges which pose squeezed profits a couple of years ago. And as I said, whilst nobody can give you an exact number on how a business is going to perform but going by the fundamentals of what the markets are doing, what the JV is doing in terms of drive the business growth.
We believe that again this is not a once off. I think the JV will steadily. In my opinion you should expect JV to continue to steadily deliver good performance.
Balasubramanian
Yes sir. And last point on the nuclearceutical I think.
operator
Yes, thank you sir.
Sakeet Kapoor
Okay, thank you madam.
operator
The next question is from the line of Rohit from BNK securities. Please proceed.
Rohit Modi
Thanks for the opportunity. And that’s one good set of numbers. So first question is on the specialty chemicals front. So how have we seen growth in terms of volumes and how has been the trend in terms of pricing over the last one year? And what are you expecting? Are we seeing signs in terms of pricing recovery? Just your thoughts on this. Thank you.
Rupark Sarswat
Are you talking about the joint venture or are you talking about both our.
Rohit Modi
Own business as well as on the JV part?
Rupark Sarswat
So if you. That’s why I Think some of the factors are common, right? So if you look at the joint venture, there was broadly, you know, 15, 16% top line growth and you already know the ideal share, which grew by 73%, which means that pat growth was similar, which is high and EBITDA growth was around 40%. And the factors that I told you led to increased sales. This is why you see the top line growth. But the EBITDA growth is much higher than top line growth because of a better cost position, promoter wise and transaction wise and also improvement of the mix.
And when all of these go up, generally fat is more sensitive, so that goes up a third. Our story in value added chemicals has some common factors, but obviously we are starting with molecules which are different, which are, which we are entering the market and our strategy is also somewhat, slightly different. One of the things that we are doing in our performance chemicals business is while we continue to build on our green credentials, we are not as dependent only on EO ethanol in the bouquet of products that we have. It’s not that we are discouraging ourselves from doing EO based product, but a lot of EO based products from their segment is done also by the joint venture.
We have other ideas. For example, one of the areas that we have been looking at and doing well is oil field chemicals. And we are looking at areas like crop protection, bio based amines, carbon smart products, etc. Our business will be led more by building partnerships where it is not that I have a product and suddenly go and sell into the market. It is generally about product development. That takes us two to four years to work with the customer on developing the product process, understanding the applications and delivering the value that they seek. You know, broadly speaking we are looking at significant, you know, kind of ballpark.
Ballpark I am saying. So keep that in mind, you know, in excess of 150% volume value contribution growth in that small segment. Now we think that is what our target is, may be higher. I think the potential is more as well. And I have reasons to believe that we should continue to deliver that kind of growth at least in the foreseeable future or the years to come. A broad strategy has been to become good partners with good players. The kind of companies that we are working with are generally very reputed global partners. We see value in IGL not only we don’t see ourselves as, you know, either low cost players or just commodity players or me too players.
We see as our objective obviously is to be preferred, if possible, indispensable partners to some of these players and I think that strategy is well in place. It is a business which takes some time to build. I am very confident that, you know, sometimes you have ups and downs here and there, but broadly that business will continue to grow and we should be able to, you know, maintain our reasonable contribution levels as well. Sometimes you enter with an entry strategy into the market and then you improve your contribution by doing several things, by doing front end differentiation, by improving your processes, etc.
Those are things that we’re working on. We have certain ideas about the business which could be quite strategic and also God willing give step increases rather than merely incremental. But it is very early for me to start elaborating on them so looking at different feedstocks, different value propositions, etc. So that is it from me, Rohit, on this.
Rohit Modi
Sure. Thanks a lot. So second question on the liqueur business. So a few parts to it. One in terms of the mix, how currently the mix is from the country liqueur, then maybe if you can give in terms of IMFL where we are doing our own brands of whiskey, vodka and the one which we are doing bottling for third party and recently acquired brands from Amrut and how this particular mix was, let’s say five years back just to give an understanding how we are progressing. The second one, again a light question to that in terms of individual brands and categories which and all are the geographies where we are currently present and where we are likely to expand in near future.
So these two points on the Little more discussion on this will be really helpful. Thank you.
Rupark Sarswat
So Rohit, I will just give you a flavor of the mix and then I will pass on to Rajuji and Sukhlaji to give you some more detail. So the portable spirit for the liquor business leaving, you know, has three big three parts. The smallest of them is extra neutral alcohol which is basically ethanol, which is sold as such to beverage manufacturers in bulk which last year, you know, I’m not going to project numbers for this year, which last year was off the order of 70 crores. We expect to see very good growth in this area because now we have capacity and this fetches us better profits than just selling into biofuels.
Okay. So that last year was close to 70 crores as far as country liquor is concerned, which has been a good workhorse for us both profitable, steady. Last year was close to 870 crores. Okay. Good share, strong presence in UT Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and we will continue to maintain that strong position. This is net of excise yes. And for IMFL we clocked about 185 crores last year. And we expect in percentage terms that will probably see much better growth. Because the focus first of all there is a much bigger playground there for us to play.
Secondly, we are bringing in inorganic in some ways growth strategies like Ambruth etc. Which will help us drive prematureization value profitability. So that gives you an idea of the mix and the relative growth that we will see. We think we would register in near future. And now I’ll hand over to Raju ji to talk to you about the question on IMFL brand. And Shuklaji if you have anything on country liquor or anything else that he wants to add.
S. K. Shukla
Okay, so should I add?
Rupark Sarswat
Yes, go ahead.
Unidentified Speaker
Please go ahead.
S. K. Shukla
Yeah. So country leaker in UP and Uttarakhand both states we have the leading position because the position of quality of the product certainly makes played a very vital role in this segment and ideals because of their external good quality ENA. And we have the, you know the traditional blinding, you know the methods through which we make this, you know the Bunty bubble segment. So because of this, you know our growth each every year on year Most probably approximately 7 to 12% growth we are getting. And this is because we have the inbuilt capacity. So in UP and in Uttarakhand mostly all the aseptics packs is compulsory by the state excise.
And we are, we were the leader since beginning in the production capacity of the aseptic packs. So because of this company as a whole we are in the position to place our product quality product almost 95% more than 95% share in the nine districts of the UP which no one no districts having the such kinds of, you know the monopoly situation which we have. So because customer is liking too much our product and they are Lyle, they can go away from the shops if the product is not available. Such kinds of loyalty never been seen in any shops for this product.
So this is the, you know the. Traditional advantage and traditional benefit of this product. And after this plant is started in Godapur plant Is started in 2006. And after 1718 when the progressive governments came in up all the growth happened in the last seven to eight years as well as in Uttarakhand also. Rajiv, if you can add more.
Unidentified Speaker
Yeah, thank you Shuklaji for the see as for three questions you asked three sub questions. One is the partnership that we have is Bacardi for the benefit of everyone. It is not a third party bottling or as we call it contract Bottling. This is much brighter Ambit because we make all the brands of Bacardi at our Kashipur plant. One segment is the RTD segment, Breezers which require high degree of carbonate. It’s a carbonated drink so it requires high degree of capital maintaining standard, maintaining temperature. And it’s a totally different ball game except Nanjanguda where Bacardi has its own plant and one more small place where we supply most of north and East India only from our Kashipur plant for Bakari products.
Number two we have in house high bouquet spirit maturation. Capex has been spent so with the world class standards of as many as More than 10 brands of Bacardi right from Breezer up to their flagship brand Catablanca and Bacardi Lemon are all manufactured there under very, very high quality standards. So the entire, entire maturation and special distillation columns, the supply chain, the logistics, the, the environmental, the regulatory clearances, everything Kashipur or Igle is responsible for the principal company. Bacardi who are our close partners for the last 15 years are so satisfied that they have left it everything to us except a couple of people who then of course they do marketing because it is their brand.
So it’s a, it’s a huge, huge effort that we go into partnership with Bacardi. Just to give you a perspective, we do as many as 200,000 cases per month for Bacardi International which is a very, very high degree of volume considering the fact that they do all premium products. This is as far as Bakardi partnership is concerned which, which for the benefit of everyone I elucidated as far as our own organic products are concerned, the traditional brand is Soulmate Blue Whiskey which is a millionaire case brand. Last year we did and I briefly mentioned about vodka, amazing vodka which is making its presence felt in wherever we go, wherever we have launched.
And also the partnership with Amrud what strategically what we have done is Amrut brands are being known for quality of and high standards of packaging and recipe. We have kept it at the top end. So we complement each other as far as country liquor, then regular brands, then vodka for our ideal products. Then we come to premium and semi premium brands for Amrut which are from a long term point of view our own brands acquired brands with the understanding that the first refusal is with us. These are all factual, publicly known facts. So you know, we have a complete price spectrum of brands and we have positioned the brands in such a manner that long term point of view we will be able to dwell upon them.
Your third sub question was geographical coverage. See, it is very easy to open new states but we do a very detailed study and our cfo, CEO and particularly our CMD are very particular that we don’t open a state till we are sure about the size of the price or as huge opportunity exists and we make money. So we have identified Kerala as the first state north where we have succeeded in getting the tender brands approval. And this month we will be addressing that state and then couple of other states for obvious reasons since we have not started I cannot mention but we have definite plans in the in this current fiscal to address at least two or three more states along with csd.
Yeah, thank you.
Sakeet Kapoor
Yeah. Thanks a lot for answering all the questions.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your question to one per participant. The next question is from the line of Jasmine listing and individual investor. Please proceed.
Unidentified Participant
Hello. Am I audible?
operator
Yes Mr.
Rupark Sarswat
Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
So good evening Mr. Saraswat and Mr. Singhal. My question is, you know related to the liquor segment and I would like to bring out some figures which I see in the balance sheet. You know the sales. If you compare between the March and June quarter the sales are up by 20.42% but our net is down 7.75%. I was just listening to Mr. Shukla and Mr. Raju that they were saying that we have got leadership position in our liquor segment in UP and Uplakhand and we’ve been doing so much of cost cutting measures, packaging, premiumization of liquor.
But why is that? The sales have grown but our profit is. There’s a degrowth in our profit. And I’ve been an investor of your company since last 10 years and what I’m yet to see is that we have been doing so much of CapEx, we are changing our company, our sales have grown but we are yet to see any kind of financial or operating leverage come into play. It’s a very basic mathematics that when our sales are growing and our capex is all done, the profit should be incremental. But this degrowth in our profit from March quarter has really disappointed us.
Just can you just throw some light and explain to me why we missed on a bottom line in this quarter?
Anand Singhal
See, in the Q1 of the last year the EBIT margin was 17.54% while in the Q1 of the current year it is 21.12%. Of course that has increased by about 3.5% or so. Of course the sale has also increased from 1593 crores to 1805 crore. If you compare with the last quarter means Q4 of the last year when the sale was 1609 while in the current quarter it is 1805. While the EBIT margin has certainly reduced from 27% to 21% in some cases. There are so many brands which my marketing division is selling in the market and every product is not having the same kind of EBIT margin.
So there may be, I have to check internally but there may be some of the sale which is having a slightly lesser margin as compared to the other products. So it may be because of that. If Rajuji wants to add something on this, he can add.
Unidentified Speaker
Shuklaji, will you like to add? Otherwise I will come in.
S. K. Shukla
No, Rajuji, continue.
Unidentified Speaker
See, there are two factors as I know, as I understand if my understanding of the question is right, between last fiscal, last quarter and this quarter. See, there were two changes that have happened in our heartland of UP and Uttaranchal. Both the states underwent new policies with the result, with the result the volumes from April and policies start from April. So April and May there was, I mean end of the last year that is from the 31st of March there was a lot of lifting, a lot of dumping of stocks naturally by the trade because they were not sure about the new policy.
And once the new policy has come in UP and Uttarakhand, which are our key states, naturally the growth was sluggish not only with us but it is also as an industry phenomena. I’m sure in the current quarter, July, August, September, it will not only stabilize, it will grow. And definitely in O and D quarters as we call it, October, November, December, it will gather as our cfo beautifully said. You know there can be up and down in a quarter in an industry including us but overall last year performance versus this year we have definitely grown as a percentage of volume as well as value.
So there is no cause of concern. It’s an industry phenomena.
Unidentified Participant
Secondly, Mr. Saraswat, you know, my next question is for the Nature Biopharma and I would remember, you know, post in 2021 we were doing a net margin of around 33% in our business and our sales were around maybe 38, 40 crores per quarter. And now you know, when I see the results of Nature Biopharma the net has come down to 2.38%. As a businessman, this would suggest that this is a trading margin, not a manufacturing margin. Any manufacturer who is in a segment of pharmaceuticals or new nuclearceuticals would not operate. What is the business strategy in this Nature Biopharma, when we are.
Rupark Sarswat
Let him complete, I will give a short response and then we can.
Unidentified Participant
My concern is about the business strategy. We are planning to unlock shareholder value by demerging our business units when there is extreme degrowth in that business. So how are we going to address that?
Rupark Sarswat
So Mr. Singh, there is a margin squeeze, not as much as a degrowth in the business because when you look at growth, sometimes you don’t only look at one year number but if you look at four years you will see a significant top line growth in the business. So that’s one thing. You have made a very valid point. We recognize I cannot deny the fact that there is a margin squeeze which is what you pointed out. Now I will give you a more generic answer, so to say and then we can engage separately with more details.
And I have my colleague who looks at finances numbers for Nature Biopharma will also respond. While this is an API business, which is, you know, thiocorticoside is also an API, so is nicotine, where we sell in is also an API. It has its own pressures as well. You know, there are a couple of pressures. I am not going to elaborate on the exact impact of all. One pressure is to do with, you know, if there is increased cultivation of the feedstock and there are more new entrants that puts pressure on margin. So that is one thing that occurred.
We have been selling thiocolgicoside to markets like Turkey, which is a gateway to Europe. We also saw some kind of a demand squeeze there. And when there are a lot of new entrants and there are alternatives to these natural muscle elections which come from countries like China which have also flooded the market. So to some extent some of the more so to say workhouse products have faced this. That’s a valid point. Now the strategy of course is very simple, I did mention it before, is to do several things is to first of all get into differentiation through impurity profiling, building dossiers, etc.
Which is something that we’re doing also to get. Now what happens is Turkey, for example, finds it easier to get materials from India, sell it into EU because they’re partner of that, to also get direct approval approval which is a more stringent process. But when you go through this process, and I will request Manish to talk about some of those approvals which we are getting in the regulated developed markets to get more product in there by being differentiated through quality, through having our dossiers completed etc. We are also looking at a whole host of other products and we are looking at formulated products, co branding products and created a branded portfolio that is a generic strategy.
But I’ll pause I have a colleague of mine who can add something more to it. So yeah just in the Manish side. So basically you know broadly if we bifurcate nutraceutical business so as CEO told that one is API, another is nutraceuticals. So you know as mentioned by him about the pressures of various kind on the APIs we are simultaneously we are trying to develop the nutraceuticals market. So for that you know our plant has also been certified as GMP plant. We have got the EAR and NSF for that particular plant. So as this quarter performs the another 1/4 could be on the same line.
But but from the third quarter we are having a certain planning to introduce our Nutraceuticals brand branded Nutraceuticals in US market and in European countries directly from our own. So at that time the market could the margin could increase substantially as it looks to us.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, that’s good to hear. Thank. You.
operator
Thank you. The next this will be the last question of the day from the line of Saket Kapoor from Kapoor and company. Please proceed.
Sakeet Kapoor
Yes sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Yes, you have already answered about the nutraceutical part of the story. So that was only the point of concern and steps also you have attributed what we are taking and it is only now on the markets to improve so that our profitability will improve. That is what the understanding is. So that’s all from my guidelines and we hope for good times ahead Sir.
Rupark Sarswat
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. I now hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments.
Rupark Sarswat
So thank you for conducting this conference for us. Thank you all for attending it and thank you many of you who have been watching Ideal very closely and through your questions we try and introspect. We try and learn. Thank you for that and look forward to seeing you after the next quarter. Have a good day. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. On behalf of Incred equities. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you. It.