There was good news from Huhtamaki PPL. The company yesterday announced commencement of commercial production at its newly set up label making factory in Sikkim on 27^th March and its flexible packaging unit in Assam on 28^th March. Both the units have units have been set up to get better access to markets of North East.

The company has invested Rs.65 crore for this expansion into North east and it is also in the process of relocating its main label making unit from current location of Mahape (Navi Mumbai) to a new state of the art of facility in Greater Mumbai. This is expected to be completed by Dec 2017. This unit is one of the largest label making facilities in India, with capacity of 5 million labels per day.

The company had posted a weak set of numbers for Q3FY17 with a 26% (QoQ) drop in net profit at Rs.15 crore and EBITDA was down 18% at Rs.53 crore with margins down by 210 bps at 10..2%. Lower realisations and higher raw material prices affected the performance.

The market is happy about the company’s new facilities in North east going on stream and hopes that these returns will start showing FY18 numbers. The stock price, which had closed yesterday at Rs.227.95, went on to an intra day high point at Rs.232.70, the current price.