Ladies and gentlemen, good day, welcome to Tata Chemicals Limited first quarter FY 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star one, zero, zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Gavin Desa from CDR India. Thank you, over to you, sir.
Thank you, Vito. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Tata Chemicals first quarter FY 2024 earnings conference call. We have with us today, Mr. R. Mukundan, the Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Zarir Langrana , Executive Director, and Mr. Nandakumar Tirumalai , the Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to mention that some statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. I now invite Mr. Mukundan to begin the proceedings of the call. Over to you, Mukundan.
Thanks, everyone. Good morning, and welcome everyone to our quarter one FY 2024 earnings call. I'm joined by my colleagues, Nandu and Javed for today's call. I'll start the discussion with key operational highlights across business geographies, following which Nandu will walk you through our financial performance for the quarter. Tata Chemicals at consolidated level has had a higher revenue and a far better realization, partly impacted by lower volumes. I'll come to that in a minute. There has, there has also been a EBITDA growth, driven by higher realization.
There is an impact on PAT and PBT due to higher interest cost and higher tax outflow, because many of our entities now don't have the tax sheet which they had, because they are all net positive, cumulatively positive in terms of tax calculation, especially Magadi and US also, which is now on a higher tax rate. I will now give an update on soda ash demand supply situation. As you would all know that, the China net supply increased in the market, partly driven by, I think, the post-COVID slowdown lower than demand in China.
We expected a pretty strong recovery that has not happened, and that slowdown has created a surplus in the market. Added to that was Inner Mongolia capacity, which came on stream maybe about five to six months sooner than expected.
This was anticipated, but it came earlier, and that, coupled with the lower demand, created a demand supply ease in the market. The rest of the market, the demand was as planned in terms of more or less stable, and India also remained stable in general, mainly driven by the sustainability demand coming off in our sector. The domestic supplies were, in India, were largely impacted due to Belgian imports, which increased by almost double. We entire Tata Chemicals had to take appropriate steps in the marketplace to ensure it supplies to customers were at the most competitive competitive levels.
Coupled with that, in some parts of the world, there was some delay in purchase decisions, which on the expectation of management of inventory levels, which had gone up due to supply chain constraints in the past, which has now eased, and some postponement of purchase, which is an expectation of a lower pricing over a period of time.
Our overall demand supply situation remains robust, mainly driven by the growth, growth in the key markets, which were highlighted before, driven by energy transition, and that will continue to be so. I'll talk about the near-term challenge, but I think in the medium and long term, it remains still the same as we have given commentary last time.
ta Chemicals' market position, our net sales in India was about 180,000 tons. This includes India production and Magadi imports into India, as compared to 185 tons last year, which was almost 96% of last year. This was despite the impact of 10 days, which we had in dispatches in December, due to the Biparjoy cyclone, by which, because of this, there was some slowdown in availability of goods and trucks.
nd obviously for about three to four days, the district administration had stopped all road and rail movement due to safety issues. But however, we did manage to get to 96% of quantity as last year, combining TPO sales, Tata Chemicals sales in India.
Our focus continues to ensure our customers are serviced, and we maintain our position with customers through engagement with them, and continue to maintain steady margins with focus on cost, and that, that focus still continues. In addition to soda ash business, the rest of the other parts of the world, especially UK and US, performed to our plan. Magadi was partly impacted by certain supply chain issues, which, which, which impacted its sales into Southeast Asia, and also there was an increased pressure of Chinese material availability in that market. That position is being corrected as we speak.
In terms of our specialty products, Rallis overcame a challenging period and was able to restrict the impact on its EBITDA due to better product mix, control and pricing actions. That has been visible in the results we declared. Relative to marketplace, they have performed to our plan.
To conclude, we expect the market to remain in the range bound the situation, with certain supply, the demand supply situation easing in the short term. Over medium term, our overall target in terms of positive changes happening on the demand side, which will lead to balanced demand supply situation, medium to long term, still remains our base case.
With this I'd like to add that we remain committed to our expansion plan, which have already been approved by the board of approximately 300,000 tons in India, about 250,000 tons in Kenya, and about 400,000 tons in US About 1 million tons, all, all our worldwide capacity put together.
In addition, we are scaling up our salt capacities in India. And in UK, we will be by the end of this year, our pharmaceutical grade salt plant will be operational. We remain focused on managing our margins and cost structures, ensuring debt repayment continues and strengthening the cash flows. We continue to deleverage and repay our debt. This, this quarter, we repaid about $95 million.
In US, we repaid about $45 million, in Singapore, about $15 million. We remain committed to ensuring a very balanced approach to marketplace and a very conservative approach to our balance sheet, and a very focused approach to our growth plans, and we remain on, on track as we see. With this, I'll hand over the floor to Nandak umar, who'll walk you through our financial performance.
Thank you, Nikunj, and good morning to everyone. Let me take you through the performance, after which we'll go to Q&A. On the headline numbers first, for the quarter, our revenues for the quarter were at INR 48 crores as against INR 4,000 crores last year's first quarter, higher by 6%. Revenue increase was driven by price increase, partly impacted the lower volume across geographies, and consumptions being impacted mainly in India and UK EBITDA for the quarter was at INR 1,043 crores as against INR 1,015 crores last year, and this, in fact, is an all-time high EBITDA.
EBITDA margins were lower by 0.7%, owing to pricing drops in India and lower volumes. PAT for the quarter was at INR 578 crores, lower by 10% than last year's first quarter. Moving on to each business, starting with India.
Revenues for the quarter was at INR 1,135 crore. Soda ash volumes were down by 8%. The prices were lower, owing to the price drops are taken during the quarter. Salt business continued performing to perform well, and good volumes came there. TricaP volumes were a big turn from the last year's first quarter. Moving to Europe, we delivered yet another very good quarter, with revenues and profitability registering healthy growth over last year's first quarter. The business continues to benefit from better prices following the newer contracts entered during the beginning of the calendar year.
UK business performed well, with revenues up 22% as compared to last year's first quarter, EBITDA was at 13% for the quarter. As far as Kenya is concerned, both volumes and prices stopped happening, which in turn impacted margins and volumes for the quarter.
As far as Silica and Nutra is concerned, both the businesses have growth mark in front of them. With time and investment, we expect both the segments to clock in good numbers going forward. Moving on to Rallis, first quarter was one of the most challenging periods for the agricultural industry. Crop Care business has been affected by high market inventory, steep price drops and delayed monsoon. Although revenues for first quarter was lower compared to first quarter of last year, margins were largely maintained to better product mix and good pricing.
Our company's long-term strategy remains unchanged, focused on increasing market share category and product portfolio expansion and widening market reach. Our cash at the quarter was INR 1.44 crore end of 2023, CapEx for the quarter was INR 426 crore, net debt was at INR 42.9 crore. With that, I request all the comments and hand over back to moderator to open up for the Q&A session. Thank you. Kevin, over to you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star two. Participants are requested to use answers while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to one or two per participant.
Should you have a follow-up question, we would request you to rejoin the queue. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question is from the line of Saurabh Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is that we have seen decline in volumes on soda ash for all the geographies. While India, you related to there was an impact of the cyclone. You know, the rest of the geographies, is the impact more because of softness in demand as such in industry, or is it more because of any loss to, you know, market share to the new capacities that have been coming online? What is your outlook on the volume recovery from here on?
Yes. Let me, let me address this, what we, I think, Saurabh, in India, it is a combination of, I think, partly the cyclone, and also because of the cyclone, some precautionary operation measures taken by the plant. That is the main reason.
Till about, I think, May, June, sorry, April, May, we were putting us on track. It is towards the end of June, where I think the, we saw a bigger dip in the numbers. As far as Kenya is concerned, I think our biggest shift has come in two markets, one in Thailand, other one in South Africa. Where, in Thailand, of course, there's a pressure felt from the Chinese imports and some large country landing up there.
We have to continue to serve our contracted customers, but we ensure that we are going to first contract, so that going forward, we have volumes which we could push in that market and engage with customers. In South Africa, there was certainly a certain large amount of consignments which have landed in the market, which delayed some of our customer, so it is more a temporary phenomenon as well. Nobody is concerned in the markets, which should pass up over a period of time. As far as US is concerned, there was no issue of any market issue.
It is more related to some pressures we did see at the beginning of the year, which was spillover of the last quarter, where there were supply chain issues with respect to the railroad movement. That has now more or less corrected.
In fact, there's been a change in the leadership and management, and they have assured the railroad that they will fix these issues, and we are seeing improvements in the situation. I would say it is not fully resolved, but it is pretty much on the way to getting resolved as far as the railroad is concerned. Broadly, I think quarter one, we would not attribute it largely to market. Our commentary on the market is going forward.
When I said, short term, I think that period could range between nine to 12 months, on one hand, to stretching as much as 15 to 18 months. We have to see how China, demand increase. The, the overhang of, basically, the real estate sector pressures which are being transmitted to the flat glass industry are creating undue pressure on the market, especially with respect to supplies coming on.
There's a mismatch there, which, I think, if we put in our demand supply model, that continues for anywhere between, let's say, a year to a year and a half, after which it sort of eases again. That's the broad, market and our, our operations.
Okay, that is helpful. My second question would be that we are seeing some softness, you know, that is pretty evident in the soda ash pricing. Are you seeing any pricing adjustments in the US exports business? Also, you know, you lock in the contracts for the domestic part of the US business, but any sort of renegotiation that can happen in those contracts as well for the rest of the year, any insights would be really helpful?
Broadly, I think where it is contracted, I think, if the erosion is even more sharp than what we see, I think customers will have to get accommodated. I see no reason why we would not do so. At this point of time, the, the domestic contracts, especially in these markets, are still holding.
There has been some impact because of some climate changes, because of, you would know about the Bud Light controversy which happened, and that has led to some containerized impacts, because, as I said, controversy, wherein I think two or three, two or three premises had to be closed because of lack of, Bud Light is the largest selling beer in the US Other than that, we, we haven't seen any major issue.
On the export markets, certainly, I think we, we move pretty close to the marketplace. Especially in Southeast Asia, I think it is a quarterly assessment, so you will continue to see, as we said, partly supported by, let us say, on the price side, partly supported costs also moving along with it. In UK, it is more or less contracted. The open position for UK is more about quarter four, so we've got to wait and see how the situation moves, especially in the local context of Europe. I think that is a very different context, where I don't see the commentary very similar to the rest of the place.
There it is more about European market situation, where our worry is not so much on the market side, but more on the energy side. We, we had a very good set of gas storage numbers, so the gas storage was demand in the UK. We are very watchful. We have gone ahead and done our hedging on energy, more or less, so that we don't get impacted during the year. We'll wait and watch and see what, how it unfolds in terms of supplies, energy supplies here.
Okay... [crosstalk]
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Saurabh Jain.
Yeah, sure. No... [crosstalk]
We request you to rejoin the question, please. Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Our next question is from the line of Arjun Khanna from Kotak Mutual Fund. Please go ahead, sir.
Sure. Sir, thank you for taking the question. The first one, in terms of our CapEx, you've mentioned the next phase. Have you decided amount? What would be the CapEx amount for this, 1 million expansion?
Broadly speaking, I think in India, it is already approved, and it is already underway. It is, our last CapEx run finished at about INR 2,900 crore, and this CapEx run will finish at about INR 2,600 odd crore. Of this, I think INR 1,300 crore is on soda ash, and the balance INR 1,300 crore is on other products. Broadly, that's the overall, you know, money being reached out. In terms of, that will give us about 0.3 million tons in addition to what we have already, and which is, which is the disclosed number in terms of the storage capacity. We, as far as Kenya is concerned, it is not going to be a major CapEx.
Our numbers are hovering around $30 to 25 million. Pretty much it is debottlenecking. In US, again, I think, it probably is closer to about $80 to 100 million, with a large amount of element being on process improvement and some debottlenecking of the group.
Just to understand this, you're saying US $100 million for 300,000 capacity?
Yeah, it is still, for, for 400,000, it is still being worked out. It could be upward on another 20%, so the detail engineering is on its way. Largely depends on whether we choose to go ahead with the switch fully to gas or not to gas. I think that decision is yet to be made. But otherwise, our other elements are more or less in place. Addition of a 13th calciner and, some element of, let's say, the trona purification process , which is being undertaken.
Sure. Sir, thank you for this. The second question is, sir, when I look at a standalone, I see we did an EBIT loss of almost INR 22 crore on INR 51 crore of revenue. Could you help us understand this, why such a large EBIT loss, given your commentary? You all spoke of the specialty side of it improving.
Oh, stand-alone, yeah. I think, in standalone, it is more related to our silica. We have two businesses. Silica business has performed to a plan. It, in fact, had a positive EBITDA number about. I think the bigger issue we faced was on the vendor with the nicotine, the Fructo-oligosaccharides fermentation platform, where the unit had produced in anticipation of an export order last quarter.
Since that order is getting delayed, we decided to slow down production and run the unit. In fact, the unit restarted production only, I think, about 30 days ago, and has been running at 50% capacity because the stocks are still with us. After that order comes through, and those stocks are shipped, we don't want to release that. That's a management decision entirely.
Thank you. Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Arjun Khanna. May we request you to rejoin the question queue for follow-up questions. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Rohit Nagraj from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. First question is on China. China coming back, has it changed in terms of the movement of soda ash across different geographies? Will it likely to stay till this new capacity comes in phases over the next few years? Thank you.
I think the way it would work out, I think it's a model which we have to sort of work out, the way it will work in the short term and in the medium term. In the short term, certainly, the exporters who are manufacturing a close to coast will begin to move the material out of China, which is what is happening. Our own view is that the prices are hit a bottom in terms of cash breaking the numbers.
If at all, we would see a reflection of logistic cost improvement being passed on to customers, but we don't see a bigger out of China than the pricing, but volume should certainly move out, because the natural ash will tend to displace synthetic ash.
In the medium term, what is likely to happen is exactly how it unfolded in US In US, there was a combination of synthetic and natural plants, but as natural plants came on stream, it completely wiped out the synthetic plants domestically. We do believe that certain uncompetitive capacities which are there within China will be challenged.
But that process will take time. It is not going to be an immediate issue, so it will unfold over a period of time, and we likely see that soon. Overall, I think it will also be a combination of in terms of when the demand supply situation balances out. At that point, I think any further changes in capacity will be put on hold.
Our view is that this balancing broadly happens in about 12 to 18 months. After that, I think we will have a better clearer picture of how much of natural, natural capacity will remain, but how much of synthetic capacity will remain and how we balance out in the overall market.
All right, sir. Got it. second question is in terms of demand from user segments, is there any challenge in certain geographies from the downstream demand, in particular, user segments?
I think so. I think the different geographies have different issues, so let me just highlight. I think as far as China is concerned, I mentioned already, the construction sector, which has really been a problematic in terms of our previous model and what is coming through in the current model, and we had to take some downward adjustments on those numbers.
In India, it has been primarily the export market. You know, the dye and chemical sector has not been doing well, and that is reflected in some of the export numbers out of India for intermediate chemicals where soda ash is consumed. Also in India, there has been a sharp fall in caustic soda prices. The silicate market has switched to caustic in the meantime from soda ash.
There's been a switch of use that, that end use actually competes between caustic and soda ash, and that has created an issue in Indian demand. As far as Kenya is concerned, it is pretty much all, all markets are fine. I can't see anything related to market. It is just a question of planning out from various markets with the inventory issue. In terms of US, the big driver in US up till now has been the one big event which happened in the market, which is the headwinds controversy on the container glass. As that demand shifts to other de-stockers, I think we will see that fees easing over a period of time.
The big issue we need to watch out is about interest rates, whether it starts to begin to hurt on housing starts and those elements. We don't, we remain watchful, but we don't see any big shifts up till now. If there are any, we will bring into the commentary in our next quarter.
Thank you. Mr. Rohit Nagraj, may we request you to rejoin the question queue for follow-up questions. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Abhijit Akela from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, and thank you so much for taking my questions. just a couple. One is on the Inner Mongolia soda ash expansion. you know, is it actually 1.5 million tons that has come on stream so far? I believe the projection by the producer was to ramp up to 5 million tons by December of this year. do you see them on track for that sort of timeline, or would you expect that to get significantly delayed?
As far as the volume is concerned, we think by the next year, at least 3 million will be there. That is what our model states. We are not using number. I think the 1.5 million tons has been slightly ahead of what, about three months ahead of our schedule, versus what is actually happened on the ground. I think by next year, we, we had modeled three, and we are also watching the speed with which the streams come on stream. We will remain vigilant. As of now, we know that 1.5 is come on stream, which is about 50% of what they had to, our model as you say.
Yeah. Just to clarify, this 3 million by next year is by end of CY 2024, like December, or, you know, sometime earlier in the year?
I think during next year, it's probably for average around three. That is what our numbers, our model was modeled on, and we retain that model.
Understood. That's helpful. Thank you. Just the other thing, I just wanted to check is, you know, I know you've alluded to this a few times in the past, but just to sort of maybe try to get an update, if any. With regard to the Tata Group's EV battery plans, you know, is there any sort of involvement that Tata Chemicals might have in any capacity, you know, over the, let's say, next two, three years or so?
As, as mentioned, even during AGM, we continue to work on the chemical side of the battery requirement together. If there are any opportunities which come up, we will certainly make those announcement as and when required. We continue to work with all Tata companies in terms of their chemical requirements. Wherever there is a match and wherever there's capability match, we will engage. So, this also falls in the same method.
Thank you. Mr. Abhijit, may we request you to rejoin the question queue, please? Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Vivek Rajamani from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you so much for your presentation. Just so from a cost perspective, just wanted to understand, you know, what is the biggest driver of the higher cost that we saw in UK? Secondly, in relation, if you could just talk about how we should think about costs going forward, and, you know, what kind of levers are available at your end to really optimize costs over the next few quarters? Thank you.
Vivek, the costs are more or less stabilized now. We don't anticipate any spikes in cost. As far as UK is concerned, I think we had the benefit of lower hedging, which, which we benefited during the last year. Now with the current hedging rate, so what you see this quarter will continue into, you know, we anticipate should continue, but, and we've also hedged it. We remain watchful on the European energy cost side, and really, that, that, that's the outline.
We also have in UK, for example, a surplus power capacity, which we need power into the grid, and that really depends on the spot spread, and that impacts the cost element, which we, which we, we take the net, net cost into our calculations.
Whenever wind energy is very high, our stock spread reduces, and that increases the net energy cost for us, because we have to reduce power into the grid. It is only these two combination, it's going to remain reigned down, I think, right across all our units. It's trending to go down in some geographies like India and US, because the softness remains. The counter to that, Vivek, is if world demand increases, especially coming out of China, these prices will probably hold, will not fall any further.
Thank you, sir. Just to clarify, I think the last time you mentioned that you do have some high-cost inventories that are going to be unwinding progressively. Would it be fair to say that going forward, any cost benefit would just be a function of these energy prices? Or is there anything that you could do specifically to, you know, further optimize costs?
Yeah. I think it, what, what you will see is the reduction in costs, some of them, will be the unwinding of the inventory levels, because at any given point of time, we have three to four months inventory. At that point in time, the cost at which it is kept into the plant will be lower. Market costs are not changing too much. I would just leave it at that, as they are. It is mostly driven off our inventory numbers.
Thank you. May we request you to rejoin the queue, Mr. Rajamani? Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Sumant Kumar from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah, my question is regarding US business. We have seen in domestic market sales of US in last two quarter, there is a volume decline, and export is doing good. Can you talk about in the last two quarters, is there any slowdown of the demand of soda ash in particularly domestic US market? The second is, after easing out of the supply chain, and we are selling into the neighboring country, and exporting to from US to other markets, so is there any pressure in the demand side also? Third thing for US also, what is the contracture contract mix of six months and quarter and year for the US business?
US, mostly domestic would be, so not to be annual calendar contract, so they will be contracted right up to December. On the export side, part of them are annual, part of them are quarterly. Those which are going to some part of customers in South America will be annual, and some, rest of them will be quarterly. That's the mix in this. In terms of the specific domestic volumes, really we shift to manage our margins and customers and customer orders.
Except for some bit of railroad issues and container glass issues, we haven't seen any major shift. Also, some part of the shift would be towards, you know, material going towards Mexico, so I would not read anything beyond that.
Okay. When you talk about the some mix is for the quarterly contract, so do you expect some softness in the realization in entire US mark- entire US business?
Not on the export side, I would say on the domestic side, certainly we gonna wait for the new year contracts to be signed, where they settle. I think that's, that a fourth issue, which also is true for UK. On the export side, I think it is mostly getting deeper every quarter, so you will continue to see shifts as the market numbers shifts.
Okay. You are at the lifetime EBITDA per ton in first quarter FY 2024. Do you think there'll be normalization of EBITDA per ton from here, here onwards?
Yeah, I think if you look at it, the export side, as I said, there will be certain shifts which will be happening, but it should be better than last year.
Thank you. Mr. Sumant Kumar, may we request you to rejoin the question queue? Before we take our next question, a reminder to all participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Our next question is from the line of Tejas Sheth from Nippon Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just on the 1-million-ton addition, in the capacity of soda ash, what would be the timeline on this?
These are under execution, so normally they will come on stream in the next 36 months. Our current plan is to take soda ash capacity in India to 1 million tons. That, that part is should be finishing by 2003 lifetime, which is in the presentation sent to you, as well as most of it should come on stream by September, when we expect our key project to come on stream. The partly will spill over into some month of October also. What is in the fact should be more or less done by then. The 1 million in addition to that is 300 in 400 in US and 250 odd in Kenya.
That is underway. That should come in about 36 months.
Okay. Balance INR 1,300 crores, which we are spending, which will be towards which products, and what will be the timeline completion of those?
Yeah. I think approximately INR 2,600 in India, I think INR 30 million in soda ash, which is broadly towards the soda ash and salt and some bicarbonate, so within the core products of the... All these numbers, as I said, they're all for a 1 million ton capacity.
Okay. Okay. On the EV battery comment that you made, that we are working with the group companies on the, on the chemical side of it, it's only on the sodium-ion battery side, or we are even working on the lithium-ion side?
There are chemicals which all, all companies use, so we continue to engage with them wherever, our chemicals come to, or we have an opportunity to produce them, because there will be manufacturing of scale, capacity to be created for them. We'll engage with them and, to, to the extent that we can have a, a profitable, viable pathway to implement, we will implement. It is not related to sodium-ion, so those chemicals.
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Sheth. May we request you to rejoin the queue, please? Thank you. Our next question is from the line of S. Ramesh from Nirmal Bang Equities. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning, and thank you very much. Can we have some numbers in terms of what was the global consumption in first quarter and the available production in the world, and how you see this demand-supply balance moving in terms of numbers in the next one year?
I won't give you quarter, but I'll give you the annual number. I think our net, probably, I think our net addition in the model as the new capacity coming on stream was about 2.2 million tons or so. I think we think we underestimated that by 1 million tons. The demand side, which is really driven off what has happened in China, largely, I've seen almost close to about 1 million tons. The overall overhang is about 2 million tons right now, so 2 to 2.5 million tons or so. I'll speak in terms of net numbers in the model. I won't take specific numbers.
Okay. The next thought is then, when do you see this overhang of supply getting absorbed by new demand, especially the solar glass? You said it's about one to 1.5 years for the construction market in China to improve. If that remains soft, do we see the solar panel addition and lithium carbonate growth absorbing this?
It is not just that, element, but it is, it is, all of it.
Okay. That means we need to see underlying fundamental demand in across all the sectors improve before this supply overhang can be absorbed. Is that a correct way of understanding this?
Yeah. The issue, drivers are very different across markets. As I mentioned, in China, it mainly, it mainly seems to be driven off the construction, real estate and the whole element around it. In where there is a slowdown. Rest of the segments are not seeing that kind of a slowdown.
In India, for example, it is mostly led by the export, which are exported are seeing, especially into Europe, so dyes and dyestuffs and other chemicals. Also, the switching of the demand for, from caustic to caustic and silicate broadly, I think there's been a development there. The caustic shifts as well as the export demand, we have to watch the market as we go.
The other one, on the construction side, we have to really keep focusing on the Chinese government policies with respect to interest rates, funding, and all that. Rest of the world, again, I just want to say Europe and the US, and in other parts of the world, certainly the heightened interest rates, if they continue to harden more, I think that will put pressure again on the housing and housing sector, which again flows back into the flat glass. We need to watch this, whether we are at the end of the interest rate cycle or if it is going to continue to be hardening even more.
Okay. Coming to the UK business, in terms of the growth from the pharma grade bicarbonate, and the other initiatives you're taking on energy, do you think that will improve the EBITDA performance of the UK, say, in FY 2025 and going forward?
Yeah, I think that remains on track, and that will continue to be the positive driver. It will continue to the baseline EBITDA, which we use to sort of track in UK for about GBP 25 million, that should move up by at least GBP 10 to 15 million. That is the current change which we see.
Thank you. Mr. Ramesh, may we request you to rejoin the question queue, please? Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Saket Kapoor, from Kapoor & Co . Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Namaskar, sir, and thank you for the opportunity. Sir, firstly, if you could allude again, what would be the normalized margin for our UK business? I think the port and margin was guided to us from this quarter onwards, this quarter itself. These numbers are the ones which we should continue in for the year as a whole, analyze them, or what should be the margin profile for the UK business?
For which business, sorry?
Sir, for the UK business, we were informed that we were moving into port and margin from first quarter, the reported quarter.
Yeah. I think, if you just look at the port and margin structure, I think I was in the contracted, which most of it is contracted in Zoraish, that is back to quarter one, broadly. Quarter four, we will have to still go through the port and margin structure, because the contract is closed for first quarter.
These will be the normal, reported margins? These first quarter numbers are the ones which we can analyze, because these are very lower set of numbers for the UK segment, integrated.
This, this should probably track the numbers moving forward, because it is the contracted numbers, it reflects the contracted.
Okay. Sir, on the, on the import part of the story for the Indian market, what have been the imports in the country, sir, for the last quarter? Sir, also you mentioned about that, generally, we have seen that when, when there is a natural capacity coming up in the region, the chemical process and the other capacities generally going down. What is the current split between the same in China? What is the incremental demand from solar, I think so, annual, the per day production of solar panels is one lakh quarter and better, the reported numbers in China. If you could sum up these three points, sir.
It, the, the point about synthetic versus natural in the, in the, in the regional or what I would call in the country markets, where it is-...I think it will play out, and that's largely a function of overall domestic demand and domestic supply, and how much surplus needs to travel out, because exports are generally less remunerative than domestic sales. We, and that will play out specific to China.
Today it remains the largest producer and largest consumer, accounting for almost 30 million tons of demand and 30 million tons of supply. On that 30 million tons, I think overall, by the next year end, at least 3 million tons will be on stream.
We expect another market estimation is it will go up to about 5 million tons of natural ash coming out of the Mongolia. That effectively is about close to 17% to 18% of the domestic demand. That's a large overhang, and we do anticipate some kind of rebalancing to happen there internally. Timeline for which I think we can't estimate. If the demand bounces back in China and it moves in a robust manner, I think the impact on the synthetic will be less. I think that is the difficult part, why we are not giving any specific guidance on the synthetic piece. At least our model, we are not able to model that.
The second piece in terms of soda ash demand into solar glass, broadly, I think you can take 20%. If someone opens a 1,000 ton per day plant, you will need 200 tons per day of soda ash. That's broadly something which one can use.
Thank you. Mr. Saket Kapoor, may we request you to rejoin the queue, please? We have a follow-up question from the line of S. Ramesh from Nirmal Bang Equities. Please go ahead.
Hello. In the nutraceutical segment, has production resumed normally, and they are able to operate a normal run rate? Do we expect that to, you know, show profits over the rest of FY 2024? Do you see the India Specialty business contributing to our earnings in this, in India business over FY 2025?
I won't go that far. I would like to remain on the, the current situation. Current situation, our utilization actually is below what we had last year. It is, it is running about 60%, because we are, we are holding inventories, and which we need to sort of, address by, putting, contracting export orders, which our teams are working. In terms of silica, I think it is not so much related to market. We are running the plant at about 85% or 90% capacity. It's almost nearly full, because if you account for switches in product grade and all, that is a very complicated beast to run.
Where we need more additional plant, what we are doing is to take up the capacity, over I think we will be fully aligned to the tire and rubber business, and we would take the capacity to 30,000 tons. We are in the planning phase of adding another 10,000 in terms of capacity build. It's more a capacity issue, and silica is certainly profitable and a steady business to build for us. That's where we are.
Thank you. We move to our next question. Our next question is from the line of Manikantha Garre from Franklin Templeton in India. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning, sir. A couple of questions from my side. The first one is, Dipak, I read your comment that, in China, in the medium term to long term, we will see, the capacity shift from, synthetic, to natural, potassium. In that context, wanted to understand, are you seeing that reserves in, this Inner Mongolia area are as, high as what we have, got in the US? Because I think we are analogous to what has happened in the US, and strongly comparable in terms of the reserves there. That's the first question, sir.
We couldn't hear clearly, sir. Can you repeat it again?
I was asking about your earlier comments. Am I audible now?
You are audible, but it's not very clear. Can you speak clearly? Hello?
Sir, the line for Mr. Gare has dropped. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our question-and-answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you everyone for this participating in the conference call. As we mentioned, that quarter one has been delivered well, considering the market conditions. We remain watchful for rest of the year, the only thing we continue to do is to engage with our customers and ensure we have agile response to marketplace, and ensure our costs and margins are held tightly. At the same time, our medium-term and long-term strategy in terms of bringing on stream additional capacity remains on track.
We will navigate this period with agility to ensure that we have a more robust balance sheet, more higher level of customer engagement in the relevant markets and ensure that our profitability and contribution continue to improve. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Tata Chemicals Limited, that concludes the conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.