Balmer Lawrie & Co Chairman and Managing Director Adhip Nath Palchaudhuri
Diversified public sector undertaking Balmer Lawrie & Co expects its rapidly growing rail logistics business to generate over ₹200 crore of annual revenue from FY28 onwards, backed by its major contract with steel maker NMDC Steel.The Kolkata-headquartered company, which is currently carrying finished steel coils for SAIL under the Liberalised Special Freight Train Operators (LSFTO) scheme of Indian Railways, has recently won a substantial contract from state-run NMDC Steel for transporting its cargo.NMDC Steel contract to boost revenue visibility“Under rail logistics, we have been running three rakes for transportation of SAIL’s cargo. Now, we have got an order for 12 rakes from NMDC Steel under the LSFTO scheme. We expect to start deploying these rakes in a phased manner from the second half of this financial year. So, our revenues are going to go up substantially. During the next financial year, all these rakes will be fully deployed. We expect rail logistics to become a very strong business for us,” Balmer Lawrie & Co Chairman and Managing Director Adhip Nath Palchaudhuri told businessline.“The NMDC Steel tender of 12 rakes for 10 years potentially has a revenue stream of more than ₹2,000 crore over the 10-year period. Typically, depending on the distance it travels, a rake typically gives us around ₹20-25 crore revenue. This is assured revenue as we have signed a contract with the company for transporting its cargo for 10 years. So we are actually sitting on a ₹2,500 crore worth of assured revenue over a period of 10 years. I think in the history of Balmer Lawrie this must have been the largest ever win from a revenue perspective,” Palchaudhuri said.Currently, Balmer Lawrie is leasing the rakes from an American company. The company is planning to buy its own rakes to boost profitability.Expansion plans in third-party logisticsIts third-party logistics (3PL) service is progressing well, with around 70-80 per cent of its main hub in West Bengal’s Dankuni operational at present. As part of the 3PL initiative, the company has developed the main hub with an area of around 1.5 lakh sq ft. Three spokes of the project are planned at Siliguri, Guwahati and Cuttack or Bhubaneswar. “During FY27, we should be getting at least one spoke if not two,” Palchaudhuri said.Logistics remains a key growth driverThe company’s logistics segment posted a revenue of around ₹810 crore and registered a profit of nearly ₹90 crore in the last financial year. Its travel & vacations segment’s revenue and profit stood at around ₹378 crore and over ₹70 crore, respectively, in FY26.The company’s core businesses are Logistics, Travel & Vacations, Greases & Lubricants, Industrial Packaging and Chemicals.For FY26, the company’s revenue from operations on a standalone basis grew 8.21 per cent year-on-year at ₹2,699.27 crore, while net profit registered a growth of 5.53 per cent year-on-year at ₹245.68 crore.Published on June 2, 2026
