Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Ion Exchange ( India) Limited Q2 and H1 fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants' 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 touchtone phone. Please note that this call is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Purvangi Jain from Valorem Advisors. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Good afternoon, everyone, and a warm welcome to you all. My name is Purvangi Jain from Valorem Advisors. We represent the investor relations of Ion Exchange (India) Limited. On behalf of the company and Valorem Advisors, I would like to thank you all for participating in the company's earnings conference call for the second quarter and first half of the financial year 2026. Before we begin, let me mention a short cautionary statement. Some of the statements made in today's earnings call may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainty, which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated. Such statements are based on management's belief as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to the management. Audiences are cautioned not to place any undue reliance on these forward-looking statements in making any investment decisions.
The purpose of today's earnings call is purely to educate and bring awareness about the company's fundamental business and financial quarter under review. Let me now introduce you to the management participating with us in today's earnings call, and hand it over to them for their opening remarks. We have with us Mr. Aankur Patni, Vice Chairman, Mr. Indraneel Dutt, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Vasant Naik, Group Chief Financial Officer, and Ms. Nikisha Solanki, Company Secretary. Without any delay, I request Mr. Vasant Naik to start with his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Purvangi. Good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to welcome you all to the earnings conference call for the second quarter and first half of financial year 2026. For the second quarter under review on a consolidated basis, the operations normalized with the completion of migration to the SAP environment. The company reported an operating income of INR 7,339 million, an increase of around 14% year-on-year. The EBITDA stood at INR 685 million, which is largely on the same line year-on-year. The EBITDA margin stood at 9.33%, net profit was INR 499 million, a decline slightly by 1.4% year-on-year. While the PAT margin was 6.8%. For the first half of financial year 2026, the company reported operating income of INR 13,171 million, an increase of 9% year-on-year. The EBITDA stood at INR 1,310 million, down 1% year-on-year.
The EBITDA margin stood at 9.95%, and net profit was INR 984 million, an increase of 3% year-on-year, while the PAT margin was around 7.47%. Now let me take you through the quarterly segmental performance on a consolidated basis. In the engineering division, the revenue for the quarter was INR 4,562 million, an increase of 16% year-on-year. The segment EBITDA was INR 224 million, a decline of 5% year-on-year. The inquiry bank has remained steady, and we witnessed a sequential increase in order flow during the quarter, driven primarily by medium-sized opportunities. We also secured a few orders in ultra-pure and high-purity water projects within the solar and pharmaceutical segments and continue to actively pursue additional opportunities in these areas. Our services division recorded strong growth during the quarter, supported by the acquisition of several high-value long-term O&M contracts.
Execution activity picked up pace during the quarter in the industrial segment, resulting in both sequential and year-on-year improvement in turnover. Our execution of the UP Jal Nigam order remained muted during the quarter. Regarding the Sri Lanka project, with the resumption of funding by the customer and with their satisfaction with the company's ongoing progress of work, we are now expediting the completion of the contract. Margins during the quarter were impacted primarily by elevated infrastructure costs. These were planned investment to support higher future volumes as well as the continuing effect of a legacy project that has influenced the margins for the period. During the quarter, we also entered into a strategic partnership with MANN+HUMMEL Water and Membrane Solutions for manufacture of hollow fiber ultrafiltration and membrane bioreactor membranes in India. This will be under a co-branding arrangement between the HYDRAMEM brand and MANN+HUMMEL.
Leveraging MANN+HUMMEL global proven membrane technology, we will produce these advanced membranes locally at our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, thereby reducing the import dependence and enhancing cost efficiency and competitiveness in the water treatment project across India. The company also continued to invest in its standard system engineering facilities to expand the range of innovative off-the-shelf engineering products. The current order book stood at INR 27.11 billion, with an order inflow of INR 4.7 billion during the quarter. Coming to the chemical segment, the revenue for the quarter was INR 2.184 billion, an increase by around 11% year-on-year. The EBIT stood at INR 591 million, increase of 13% year-on-year. The segment recorded both sequential and year-on-year improvement in turnover during the quarter, while maintaining its margin profile, reflecting consistent operational performance.
We are also pleased to share that the company has commenced the stage-wide commissioning and commercialization of its greenfield manufacturing plant at Roha, Maharashtra from the last week of September 2025. This important milestone further strengthens our manufacturing capabilities and underscores our commitment to delivering high-quality Indian ion exchange resin to the customers across the globe. For the consumer product division, the revenue for the quarter stood at INR 858 million, which increased by around 24% year-on-year. The loss for the quarter was INR 27 million, as against a loss of INR 35 million in the same period of the previous year. The segment continues to record healthy volume growth. We have maintained our leadership position in the softener segment while steadily expanding our market share in other segments through the implementation of focused and aggressive marketing strategies. With this, we can start with the question-and-answer session.
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 their touchtone 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 will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Chetan Vora from Abakkus Asset Manager . Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Hello, sir. Sir, on the engineering front, we saw the execution picking up at 18% growth rate, whereas the margins were all-time low at 4.8%. How should we understand these two situations wherein the execution has improved but the margins have been going lower and lower, and these margins were never heard of?
Good afternoon, Chetan . Thank you for your question. This is Indraneel Dutt speaking. Your observation is valid. Let me answer both parts of the question. I think on the revenues, as you know, as we reported in the first quarter, that we were in the process of implementing the SAP system. As a result, our first quarter performance was muted on account of that implementation. The engineering business, obviously, picked up those latent or pending order backlog, and we were able to bring forward the execution in the second quarter. That is why you see a decent growth there.
In terms of the margins, I think this has been consistent with what we have been calling out in the past few quarter calls, where we have already highlighted about the challenges in one or two of the projects that we are going through execution. We had informed the stakeholders that we expect to continue for some more time. That is why you see a muted bottom line here. Also, maybe worth mentioning that last year, we had a good inflow of international projects, again, purely timing-based, which had a better profit mix. That is the reason why you see a temporary, I would say, downturn on the profitability side. We continue to work on the execution of this balance order. There are also other orders that are coming in with an improved profitability mix.
We hope that going forward, it will start slowly normalizing. This year-
Can I just-
This year will continue to be tough till we close out these pending projects in the engineering segment.
Sir, for two parts to that, till the time though, can you just quantify how much percentage of the legacy projects are yet to be executed? If not the amount, but can you tell us in the percentage terms, what percentage of the legacy orders are still to be executed? Till then, whether we will be seeing the margins sub 5%?
As I said, again, we will not give any details on any specific projects or so, either on balance pending execution or on the margin levels. We have mentioned in the past that we expect the execution of these one or two projects to continue till the end of this financial year. We are still holding on to that assessment from our side. Those project execution continues. We are making good progress. For whatever reasons, the headwinds on the margin continues. At the same time, we would have seen we have picked up a decent flow of orders that have come in this quarter, which has been with favorable profitability profile. We believe as those products are getting to execution, the overall situation will start getting better. Beyond this, at this point in time, we will not be able to offer you anything more specific information.
Sir, as you had mentioned last quarter, that by quarter two you will be in a position to say how the full year looks like. For the fiscal year 2026, what should be the revenue trajectory and the margin profile for the engineering front?
We expect the first half performance to continue broadly in the second half. I think on the engineering side, that will be our call right now, because some of the projects that we are getting in now, I think by the time we start getting revenue from them, will be towards the end of the fourth quarter or the early of next quarter. We will hold what has been the first half performance. Execute well with steady progress in project execution. We have improved billing this quarter from the ongoing EPC contracts. UP continues to be slow due to funding issues.
Again, sir, the first half was again, I would say, in the contracts that are ending the quarter one, there was a revenue decline whereas the margins were 9% because of some one-off things. In the quarter, the margins are down to 4.5%. For the full year, whether we should consider that for the fiscal year 2025 margins will be maintained or it will be lower than that? For the revenue also, the first quarter was negative and the first-half revenue growth has been 7%. What should be the ballpark guidance? I understand that you don't give the guidance, but a range, I would ask.
Yeah. I would say that first quarter had some special causes, I think those normalized out in the second quarter. I think the first-half profile that you see of both revenue and margins, we expect that to broadly continue in the second half of the year for the engineering segment.
Right. Okay. By the year-end, we are quite pretty confident that the legacy projects should be done and dusted?
As of now, I don't know about the dusting part, we are trying to see how much we can get there over the life. It's in our interest to get that closed off. That project execution is moving well. There's everyone at the top leadership team involved closely. We feel good right now where we are on that project and the progress that the projects are making.
Right. Coming to the chemicals front now, the greenfield plant, the Roha plant at Roha has got commissioned. We should expect logically the revenue growth trajectory to pick up, right?
Logically, directionally, yes. We have given our outlook on the Roha plant, we had said that this plant will progressively get commissioned. We had also said that we are expecting the plant commissioning to happen before the end of the first half. We are happy to say that in September, in the end of September, we were able to commission the plant. The plant is now into commercial production, and slowly it is ramping up on its commissioning. We have already said that we expect this plant to fully ramp up to the full scale over the course of the next three or four years. There's a gradual ramp-up phase that we are planning.
That process continues very much, we expect that in the first 12 months of the plant's production, we should be able to use at least 25%, if not more, of its volume. Right now, the Roha plant commissioning and gradual upscaling on production continues very much as per plan.
In terms of the growth for the full year for the chemicals, how should one see it? Because the first half has been at 2% growth.
First half was impacted, as we said, to the SAP implementation. We kind of recovered partly in the second quarter. As you know, the chemical segment, whatever is lost is a consumable item. You don't get that back. We delivered good 9%+ year-on-year growth in the second quarter. We expect to continue that profile for the balance of the year across our chemical and resin businesses. I think the outlook is good at this point in time, and we believe we can continue this trajectory of growth for the balance of the year.
What about on the profitability front? Because chemicals this quarter margins were all-time high of close to 29%.
This is something that is very dynamic. We've talked about in the past, it's a function of the market pricing as well as the raw material, which again, is very volatile and we keep track of commodity prices as well as on the exchange rate. At the same time, it depends also upon the product mix that we get from both our resin and the chemical businesses. As of now, We would be able to hold on. I think the engineering one is easier to call because you at least have the backlog in place. There's a little bit of volatility on the chemical side. I would hesitate to say that we will maintain these levels.
Our efforts in the past has been, and overall, I think the company has been broadly successful in holding on to these levels of margin performance. It's still a very dynamic situation and I would just be conservative and cautious that we continue to watch out for the market scenarios and try to do our best to ensure we are able to continue giving the same rate of returns on the business.
All right, sir. How much in total we would have incurred on Roha plant?
Sorry, one more time, Mr. Chetan.
Yes, ma'am. This is the last question. How much we would have incurred for the Roha plant in total?
We have indicated in the past that our total CapEx on the Roha plant is in the region of INR 425 crore. We are in the region of that level only as of now.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Ruchit Agarwal from Unifi Mutual Fund. Please proceed.
Yes. Hi, sir. Sir, a question on the consumer product business. Last two quarters, we've shown good growth in the segment. Can you help us understand what are the levers driving this segment and what is the kind of break-even timeline that we're looking at? If you would reiterate the timeline on the INR 500 crore guidance for the segment.
Thank you for the question. For the consumer products division, I think it's a very, very big market that we are playing in. We believe that there is enough for us to still go and get share from the market. We have strong confidence in our product portfolios, some of which are market leaders in their own areas. I think it's been, I would say, a consistent journey of gaining more customer share, executing well, servicing customers well. Our service contracts also are increasing quarter on quarter. I think also we are investing in our brand promotions. You'll possibly hear us on some of the FM channels. You'll hear us in some of our Bharat Ka Paani advertisements that we have launched. All of that I think is resonating with our customer base.
We continue to also launch products in the healthier side of the spectrum with alkaline water, hydrogen water. Those also are showing good response from the market. We're also expanding geographically to neighboring markets like Nepal, where again, I think we are seeing positive, encouraging response and acceptance. It's a massive market. We are still a very small player, and I think there is enough headroom for us to grow. The team is very strong, very motivated. The products' good. We're coming out with new product lines, and I think we see continued growth. The segment is growing. On your question on when we go to INR 500 crore, we typically do not give any guidance on such figures. This is one of the strong performing businesses in the portfolio because driven by consumer demand, consumer growth, and I think we see that continuing for us in the future.
Sir, anything on the break-even timeline for the segment?
See, the team is working towards growing this business. I don't think it's as much the break-even question here. I think we are plowing all the money generated back into the business in terms of gaining share, promotional activities. We are getting into more channels to market, e-tailers. We are on large stores. I don't think there's really a big concern on this from the break-even standpoint. We are investing, reinvesting back. We could easily take profits out of that business, but it's about 10% of the company. We're choosing to reinvest the profits back into the business to grow the business further.
Sir, a question on the engineering segment. We've seen the two projects in U.P. and Sri Lanka contribute about 10%-12% of our revenues this quarter. As you mentioned that it had impacted margins as well. Can you brief us more on that as to how they have impacted the margins and a little bit more color on how the elevated infra costs have come through for the quarter?
See, we don't like to give any specific views on how a specific project has moved. I think Sri Lanka is a good story for us. We have reached more than 90% of execution on that project. We continue to see good fund flow coming in on the project, and I think we are close towards finishing off the balance of the project as well. We've got tremendous amount of goodwill by the way the Sri Lanka job has been executed. I think we are on track with respect to our receivables and collections and all of that. That's, I think, definitely one of our, I would say, marquee projects that the company has done and helps us to gain strong confidence in an international country. In terms of UP, we continue to be mobilized in the respective locations where we are doing these jobs.
The fund flow, as we have mentioned in the past, has been slower than expectation. However, we continue to execute on those projects. We do have an outstanding that we are also consciously managing, and we believe that these projects will pick up in the quarters to come. I think UP, the status remains broadly similar to our last quarter's conversation. Apart from that, there are other projects that we continue to go through some of them, where the process is concluding, and there are new projects, as we said, about INR 470 crore worth of orders we have closed in the last quarter that we will get into the execution mode in some time.
Question on the Roha. When can we expect the balance capacity to commission?
As we said that this is a phased scale-up of the plant. It's a massive plant, and it will also get driven by the market demand. As of now, our plan is to scale this up completely over the next three to four years. Right now, we are in the process of commissioning, opening up more streams and lines, and that continues. Again, it's a function of the market demand. Our base plan is to scale it up fully over a three to four year period.
Sir, if you can help us understand when we.
Mr. Abhilash Agarwal, sir. May we request you to join the queue? Thank you so much. The next question is on the line of Deepak from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please proceed.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Sir, first question is in our strategic partnership, which you have mentioned in the presentation of MANN+HUMMEL Water Membrane. Could you just elaborate on this opportunity? Because we are talking about producing it locally, so it's in form of import substitution for us. I just wanted to understand what was the, let's say, quantum of import of this MANN+HUMMEL Membrane Solutions or components in India, let's say in fiscal year 2025. How well are they penetrated in, let's say, Indian water treatment solutions. What are the primary applications which this goes into?
This particular collaboration is happening on the membrane product line, which is a part of our engineering segment. Our company has been actively investing in the membrane portfolio. We currently have product lines in reverse osmosis or RO, both in brackish water, seawater, foulant resistant membranes. We have offerings in ultrafiltration membranes, both technologies of polysulfone and polyvinylidene fluoride. We have nanofiltration membrane that we offer in the marketplace. This particular collaboration is an effort to further expand and complete the full range of membrane offerings in the global market. Along with our reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration membranes, what this technology partnership gives us is access to top-of-the-line technologies in the area of membrane bioreactor, which is largely used in wastewater applications, as well as in hot sanitizable RO, which is used in the pharma, biopharma applications, and also gives us some additional technology in the ultrafiltration range.
In the ultrafiltration range, we have already been present in the market, but this is a technology that definitely allows us to compete with the very best in the world. This partnership will allow us to get to be the sole partner for MANN+HUMMEL in the domestic market. It also allows us to take this technology to the rest of the world as well in the markets that we play in. It also allows MANN+HUMMEL to use our state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities to manufacture these membranes and other ranges for their global consumption. We see this to be a win-win situation of two globally well-known, reputed brands coming together, leveraging the technology, leveraging the low-cost country presence in India of Ion Exchange. This is a segment that the company is investing into, and this will help both these companies expand their respective global presence.
Sir, would this investment to manufacture this, would it be under a JV route? How much CapEx would be required, and how much do we plan to spend, let's say, in the next two to three years? What is the revenue potential from this venture?
This is not going to be a JV route. This is more of a technology licensing that we are doing with MANN+HUMMEL. This will be manufactured in Ion Exchange's Manufacturing plants that are in the state of Goa. We have already shared earlier that apart from resins, the other product technology where the company's been investing over the past several years is on membrane technology, which we see to be a huge area of growth in the future for the company because of demand in wastewater, demand in desalination, that is there not only in the country, but also across the world and the market that we focus on supply into. This is very much a part of our strategy. This is not going to be a JV.
We are technology sharing, where we will leverage that technology and the knowledge combined with our current knowledge of the technology and make those products cater to the Indian market exclusively for MANN+HUMMEL, and also take this technology and the products for Ion Exchange customers globally, and also offer MANN+HUMMEL a manufacturing location where they can manufacture these membranes to also cater to the global market. Overall, it's very much going to be investment-driven by Ion Exchange, but gives both the companies a win-win proposition.
Okay. There could be some royalty payment for using that technology. Separately, do we need an incremental, let's say, what is the CapEx intensity, let's say, even though if we have to do this on our own facility, is there any incremental CapEx which is required to do this?
On the question of royalty, that's part of standard technology licensing agreements. Nothing very specific or material to mention here. On the CapEx investments, I think, there have been already plans with the company on growing and investing in this segment. This particular collaboration segues into our current investments and growth plans for this product line. There is nothing substantively different that we will be doing. It just gives us access to world-class technology and accelerates the process of offering that to the market. The company was well on its way to develop this indigenously. Partly it's already been done, but it just accelerates our ability to take it to market quite a bit faster than possibly was originally envisaged.
Okay. One question on chemical front, since now we are doing this commercialization of Roha plant in phased manner. Sorry if I missed it up here. I just wanted to know what is our revenue guidance for the chemical segment, including the Roha, means overall chemical for fiscal year 2026 and fiscal year 2027.
I just answered, we typically do not give a specific guidance on a particular location, but we're looking at about between 9%-10% of year-over-year growth for the year. We'll try to see that we maintain the favorable profitability mix that we have been able to continue in this particular segment, given the dynamics of the various input factors into question.
Okay. Sir, one last question to Vasant, sir. Sir, this half-yearly, if I look at your cash flow statement, we have spent around INR 160 odd crore. Right? This was almost half of what we spent in fiscal year 2025. Assuming that most of our CapEx for Roha plant was already consumed by fiscal year 2025, since the commercialization was expected in Q1 of fiscal year 2026. I just wanted to understand, where have we spent this INR 150 crore in this half-yearly, and what is the full-year CapEx guidance and where it will be spent?
The half-year CapEx spend was in the region, I think, of around INR 160 crore for the half year, out of which roughly INR 120 crore would have been in the Roha plant. The balance CapEx largely is in our existing manufacturing engineering facilities, what we have also mentioned during the operational highlight in our standard plant facilities, as well as in the membrane and in the chemical segment facilities. As far as the total CapEx expectation for the year, excluding the Roha plant, it should be in the region of around INR 80 crore-INR 100 crore, roughly.
Okay. Because of this, let's say even our gross debt has gone up from INR 300 crore- INR 400 crore in this September closing quarter. What peak debt level are we looking at, let's say by fiscal year 2026 end?
We should be having another INR 50 crore roughly addition in the gross debt level from the current level.
Okay. Thank you so much, sir, for answering the question. I'll just fall back in the queue.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pratik Kothari from Unique PMS. Please proceed.
Yes, hi, good afternoon. Sir, in the notes to account, we have highlighted this cost of material consumed includes onerous expense on some contract. What is it? Is this a legacy cost that we are calling out the onerous contract, or is it something else?
No, this is part of the accounting standard requirement of disclosing the costs which are directly attributable to the engineering contracts under execution. These are basically direct costs on the engineering EPC contracts, which are reclassified to COGS from the expenditure side, from the operating expenses side. This will be largely in the nature of this bank guarantee charges, the LC charges, the PMC charges, which are directly identifiable to the contracts. This is a standard norm which is followed across all EPC companies.
Correct. Just, even if we conclude this onerous contract by end of fiscal year 2026, even then we wouldn't be back on margin track next year, right? Given UP, assuming that ramps up, it's a question of when, if it does, that I believe would be at a lower margins.
We continue to see very aggressive pricing in the marketplace as far as large projects are concerned. We have been fairly selective in the kind of projects we pick up. However, it is a fact that across the industry, there's very severe competition. We have our new projects that we have won have been very selective. We believe there will be a better margin profile. Our effort clearly is to improve the margin profile of the engineering business from where they are. I think as we execute, getting the execution of those projects in the first quarter of next financial year, we can give a better guidance on how we see the next few quarters coming out. As of now, the teams are focused to see that we close out some of these balanced legacy projects, and try to protect our margins to the best extent possible.
Right. Sir, my question was X of this onerous and legacy projects. We earlier used to do 10%, 11% EBIT margin for the full year. Is the environment still similar or like you said, with increased competition, that doesn't seem like it.
See, there are multiple factors at play. The mix of the projects matters, the kind of industries that we're picking up those projects, industrial versus infrastructure, domestic versus exports. There are multiple factors that come into play. Our effort is to see that we get towards high single digit of profitability on the engineering side. Having said that, considering the aggressive pricing you see, we are working towards improving the profitability on the chemical side. While we want to contain the profitability impact on the engineering side, we continue to double down on areas like products, like chemicals, like services to see we can get a better margin mix. Specifically on projects, which is a part of the engineering segment, that is driven by the nature of the projects that is in the engineering order book.
As I said, driven by how much of domestic orders we have in the order bank versus international, industrial versus infrastructure, all of those play a role. Water versus wastewater, all of those play a role to be able to decide. The composition and the profile of the profitability, what I'm trying to say, will vary or varies based on the mix of the order bank.
Fair enough. Point taken. In chemical, Mr. Patni had called out a couple of years back that of this INR 400 odd crore, we are investing some INR 80 crore, INR 100 crore specific on some tech upgradation, which was I think happening for the first time in a company in India. The comment then was once the plant commercializes, we'll kind of share more details. Now that it is, if you can, what was that tech that we were investing in and just some details around that.
Yeah. I think you have a good memory. We possibly would have talked about that. As we execute, commission the plant, I think, hopefully by the, there's I think a little bit of that piece is still pending, but I think by the year-end, we should be able to demystify a little bit of the. It's one of the unique capabilities for a plant of this type, and we'll definitely be very happy to share more details. I think by the end of the year, when that is fully commissioned, as you said, when we commercially producing from the Roha plant. The entire plant commissioning will take a little time. This particular part of the project is towards the end of the commissioning phase, which we expect to be over in the fourth quarter.
Once that happens, I think at the earnings call for the fourth quarter, and Mr. Patni is on the call, I'm sure he'll be very happy to talk about those unique best-in-the-world feature that we will be introducing the Roha plant.
No, fair. I'll ask then again. Last two, Vasant sir, the increased depreciation in interest because of Roha capitalization, which you did in September. From Q3 onwards, annualized or quarterly, whatever.
Are you asking for the. Can you come again on that question?
The increased interest cost and depreciation that will hit our P&L given the large commissioning that we did at Roha.
Our total CapEx is in the region of INR 425 crore.
Yes.
Our loan is around 80% of that, which attracts interest in the region of 9.5%.
Okay.
Pro rata, the depreciation impact will come in the quarter going forward. Because the commissioning also is being done gradually, for the balance half of the year, it will be not with the full impact, but the next year onwards.
Right. Which will be how much next year?
Next year it will be at least in the region of depreciation, which should be at least in the region of around INR 30 crore a year.
Fair enough. Done. Thank you and all the best. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Raghav Maheshwari from Kamaya Wealth Management. Please proceed.
Hi, sir. Am I audible?
Yeah, you're audible.
Yeah. sir, I just wanted to get an understanding on what has been the capacity utilization on the chemical front. Given our additional Roha capacity of around 10% of the plant capacity expansion, what has been the utilization of the overall unit?
I think we are seeing clear, strong demand in this particular segment. I think across both our businesses, we see good capacity utilization. I think the reason for the company to go invest in this state-of-the-art new resin plant was that we were maxed out in capacity in our current plant. As we scale up, I think we are in a supply-constrained market with respect to us. I think as we scale up, we see good demand picking up for our supplies and the same applies to our chemical business as well.
Sir, will you be able to give what has been the utilization of the new added capacity at the Roha plant?
We are selling whatever we are making. We'll continue to sell whatever we make. See, also it need to be understood that a plant of this nature is not like flipping a button. It's a chemical process plant. It requires to be optimized. You have to get the right quality. These are export products that we are shipping out to customers. We're facing global majors. A lot of that requires a lot of preparation and ensuring that quality is best in class in the world. The scale-up has to be done in the right way, using our technology and IP knowledge to ensure that we can give our customers across the world the quality that we've committed and they deserve. Hence, the scale-up is gradual. It's deliberately, intentionally gradual.
Whatever scale-up we are doing, we also are keeping in mind that we are able to liquidate that inventory. That's how we are scaling up, and that is why it's a deliberate phased capacity enhancement that we are doing in the plant. As I said, right now, whatever we are manufacturing from both our plants are getting consumed in the market.
Okay. Just by the end of fiscal year 2026.
Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Raghav. May we request you to join the queue as there are other several participants waiting? Thank you. The next question is from the line of Saket Kapoor from Kapoor & Company. Please proceed.
Sir, thank you for this opportunity. Sir, hope I'm audible.
Yes, you're audible, sir.
Yes, sir. Sir, we look at the Capital Work in Progress closing balance at INR 200 crore. All these are pertaining to the Roha facility only or since we have capitalized on the project, if you could just clarify once again, what does this INR 200 crore balance attribute to?
Look, we have capitalized the Roha plant partially to the extent we have been able to commercialize the streams. The balance of the plant is still lying in the Capital Work in Progress, and the large part of the Capital Work in Progress balance, which you just mentioned, is related to the Roha plant only. That should get capitalized over the next few months and before the year end, we should have the entire plant as capitalized.
Okay. With respect to the bid pipeline, I think some number was mentioned, sir, in the presentation. I'm just missing it about the order book bid pipeline. Can you give some color on our win ratio? By when will these bid pipelines get converted? For the end of the year or for the H2, what kind of order wins are we looking forward for the engineering segment?
Our current bid pipeline stands at approximately INR 9,011 crore. The majority of the opportunities originate from the private sector and the public sector undertakings. The government and the infrastructure segment is a small part of this pipeline. In the last quarter that closed, as we already announced, the order inflow from engineering projects has been INR 470 crore. This has been better than our first quarter booking because a lot of that is driven by timelines. We expect around 15%-20% win rate on this project. That's what we try to go for. As we have said already earlier, we are very selective in terms of the projects pick up. Driven by our experience of some of these legacy projects that we are trying to close. We continue to pursue opportunities in India and abroad.
There are multiple projects, both small and large, which are under negotiation and discussions both in India and abroad. As and when they are all driven by timelines and the customer requirements of closing those, as and when anything material closes, we'll be happy to share that with the investor community. The engineering business continues to see good growth, promising growth. There are opportunities everywhere in both water, wastewater, and desalination, ultra-pure water, high-purity water that we continue to look at across both domestic as well as the international markets. There are other emerging sectors which also are coming up in terms of electronics, semiconductors, solar, data centers. That's also something that we'll want to pursue going forward.
To answer your question, INR 470 crore last quarter orders booked, INR 9,011 crore of active order bank at about 15%-20% of win ratio. We continue to see strong demand and opportunities that we are pursuing both in India and abroad.
Okay. This order should be closing, the INR 9,000 crore order book should close by March 26th, sir? Since the bids are open by now, that should be the opportunity.
No. Some will close, some will spill over to next year. We expect some of it more of the funnel. We are actively working in all these areas to bring more opportunities into the funnel. It's a continuous process. If you look our engineering order bank has remained in that INR 8,000-INR 9,000 crore for the past several years, and we order banks. We continue to track and in fact some of these focused markets will want to see if we can grow the order bank as well.
Okay. One small point, sir. Regarding our one acquisition of Maple, I think from foreign subsidiary company we have acquired, how have been the performance of the same? I think so we were carrying some debt also on the books of the company. How has the debt repayment been with respect to the same?
I think the overall performance has been good and as per expectations, as per the original acquisition plan that was made and the white paper that we had put in place at that point in time. There were some debt off the books, and we continue to work towards paying them off. I think the teams are now fully trained on our product lines. We are leveraging their local presence and their relationships locally to promote the Ion Exchange product portfolio. Using that to be the base of our South Europe operations and looking at both Portugal, Spain, and neighboring markets. We continue to look at their business to be the springboard for the company's growth in the overall European continent.
Okay. Any revenue number you can share, sir? I join the queue now.
We don't share specific subsidiary numbers.
Sir, that is in the trading space or in the manufacturing? Yeah, please.
Right now, we don't manufacture there. It's largely a product coming from our existing manufacturing facilities. Going forward, yes, we do have plans of some strategic manufacturing, leveraging the infrastructure and the location there. Right now, no, but in the future, yes.
Okay. Thank you, sir. I join the queue and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kishore Kumar from Unifi Capital. Please proceed.
Thank you, sir. My question is on the Roha plant commissioning. Sorry if you had answered this already. We had commissioned around 10% of the expansion. When are we planning to commission the remaining? Can we expect the remaining to be commissioned by end of this year, gradually?
Yes, I think our plan is to get the commissioning of the plant done by this financial year. As I said, the full scale of production of this plant is envisaged over the next three to four years. As far as commissioning of the plant is concerned, including the unit technology that we are trying to unveil, that should get done by the end of this financial year. That's what we are targeting for. It could be a plus minus one month, but that's the target, is to finish it before the end of this financial year.
Got it. For the capacity that is already commissioned, what is the year-end exit capacity utilization that we are targeting?
See, as I said, for the capacity that we fully produce. We're expecting all that we produce to get used up, this plant being a very large plant, as I said, we will get to full capacity over the next three to four years. Partly also driven by the global demand as well. As of now, our financials and all our projections that we have made for the business growth is to go to full capacity over the next three to four years. This plant potentially can do 3x of our current plant. It's a massive plant that we have set up, and we'll take it up in phases. There are part expansions that is already inbuilt into the plant. All of that we expect to happen over the next three-year to four-year period.
Understood, sir. My follow-up question is on the capitalization that we have done in Q1, sorry, H1. We have done INR 50 crore of capital, which that is CWIP moving to gross block, we already around INR 200 crore there in the CWIP now. What will commission 10% development? Am I missing something here actually?
No. We have commissioned 10% of the manufacturing plant and machinery, the other utilities and the admin block and the other service centers, they have been fully completed, that has also got capitalized. That's the reason why there's a 10% manufacturing capacity capitalization, the overall value of the capitalization is much higher.
Moving on to the engineering segment margins, sir, you mentioned about the legacy projects impact and elevated infra costs.
Sir, you want to wrap it up or so? May we request you to join the question queue again?
That's just a follow-up. Thank you.
All right, sir.
Yep.
Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sunil from Unique PMS. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, being a little long-term investor, repeatedly heard and listened management actively by Mr. Sarma and Mr. Patni. What I understand is, this segment of engineering, which during last 10 years moved from 2%-10% margin, going back to around 4%, 5%. We are a very engineering-driven company, technology-driven company, and we don't take very low margin and some projects which are not having any scale added. What lessons we learned during last two, three years, and when you see will we be going back to those very respectable margin of maybe double-digit for engineering segment? That is my first question.
Thank you, sir. Looks like you have been really long associated with the company.
Yes
I think your observations are valid. The company, as I said, has taken lessons from a couple of those legacy projects, which is why you see us becoming very selective in the kind of orders we pick up. I am happy to share that I think some of the projects we picked up in the last quarter, I think definitely a lot more comfortable from a profitability mix standpoint for us. You also rightly said, sir, that we actually are a technology company and engineering is one of the segments, but even in engineering, it is not a composite segment. It is made up of projects, it is made up of products, it is made up of services.
The membrane technology collaboration we talked a lot is actually part of the products business. That is the business that we are heavily investing in. It is a significantly higher potential in the marketplace.
We are looking at significantly trying to drive growth on the services side, which we believe is very important because it allows us to get an annual revenue stream, offer value-added services to our customers. We are also working on our digital offerings that we have mentioned in our annual reports, we believe those will complement our services business. We also want to be in projects, more in solutions, offering solutions which are more in technology-intensive areas like ultra-pure water, high-purity water, desalination, wastewater. Our focus is to move more towards more products, more services, more high-tech solutions, which we believe should help us improve the overall margin profile of this engineering segment. That is what we are working on, sir.
Great, sir. Just last point, sir. Basically, when we thought about this new Roha project raising [foreign recall investment, our thought process was very clear that the global market is ready for accepting our products, and we'll be definitely able to sell whatever we will be able to produce, and which you are talking about next three, four years we'll be utilizing. My question is, looking at this tariff and all this matter, do you feel we'll have to rethink our thought process, or we are confident about our progress?
Right now, again, a good question, sir. I think what we would like to state is that we feel that our original strategy is very much relevant as of now. While the tariff situation is extremely dynamic, and one can never predict what will happen. At this point in time, all we'd like to say is that the current tariff policies that are there today in the various focus markets of the world continue to give us confidence that our investment in this world-class plant was justified and maybe in time for us ready for the market demand that we see right now.
Thanks for this very detailed reply. Please convey our regards to Mr. Patni. Thank you very much.
Yes, Mr. Patni is on the line. He's listening to you, and he's acknowledging your best wishes and he wishes you progress the same.
Thank you. Due to time constraints, that was the last question for the day. I now hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you all for participating in this earnings conference call. I hope we have been able to answer your questions satisfactorily. If you have any further questions or would like to know more about the company, please reach out to our investor relations manager at Valorem Advisors. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Ion Exchange (India) Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.