Shalimar Paints has extended closure of all its operations at its offices and manufacturing locations in India from March 31, 2020 till receipt of further directions from the government authorities, the company said in a BSE filing.
It had previously closed all its factories and offices across India from March 23 to March 31 due to covid-19 scare.
In conversation with Ashok Gupta, managing diector, Asian Paints said that they have three factories- one each in North region, West region and South region. A total of 600 employees work in these factories. We are taking all measures to keep our employees safe.
Gupta said that while they as a company policy we would like to stand with our employees as much as possible as the jobs in the industry would be difficult to find, we exected total cash flows to reduce in coming months and we will have to take decision accordingly.
In an interview in September 2019, Gupta had said they hope to become cash positive by Jan-March 2020 quarter. The company’s revenue growth in Oct-Dec 2019 quarter was 24% while In it had reported a loss of Rs 5.14 crore. Now he says, “We expect the growth to be muted in Q1 and Q2 of 2020. While we don’t expect the growth to reach Oct-Dec level. in Q3 and Q4 we hope to grow by 10-15%.”
He further adds that they expect the demand to increase once lockdown is over. People will become more hygiene conscious and would like to clean up their house frequently, hence demand for such products may increase.
Gupta expects majority of the demand to come from renovation of old houses as demand from retail, automobile, hospitality and new construction will dip. He however says that paint prices may not decrease further as they are already at their lowest.
