SJN managing director BK Mandal told The Financial Express that the company's turnover fell by 22 per cent from Rs 17.2 crore in 1997-98 to Rs 13.5 crore in 1998-99.

In 1998-99, SJN had earned a nominal profit of Rs 0.25 crore and hence the board decided not to pay dividend to its two partners - Jenson & Nicholson (I) Ltd and Germany-based Schenck Process (GmbH).

Mandal said that in 1996-97 and 1997-98, the company awarded 40 per cent and 25 per cent dividends respectively.

He said that compared to 1997-98, the year 1998-99 faced further slowdown in investment in capital goods. New capacity creation in core business of steel, cement, petrochemicals, foods were practically non-existing.

However, for the current year 1999-2000, the signals are upbeat. There is considerable activity in plant balancing in cementunits particularly for producing fly ash cement. Activity is on in aluminium industry and synthetic fibre industry to modernise. There is also considerable interest from the Indian Railways and other commodity companies to upgrade the material movement records by integration with data processing system.

Mandal said that keeping all this in mind, SJN expects the turnover in 1999-2000 to swing back to at least a level of Rs 18 crore.

Referring to the restructuring programme, Mandal said that company had analysed its managerial process very closely and streamlined the strength of managerial personnel by about 10 per cent.

He said that SJN also created new business development portfolios to pursue the business applications in the upcoming expansion in power, refineries and petrochemicals segments.

Mandal said that in exports, the German partner of SJN operaters in each continent with subsidiaries or joint ventures. Efforts are on to promote the vocational and engineering expertise of SJN to supportmarkets in south and southeast Asia which are presently handled directly from Germany.

Mandal said that SJN is also introducing a range of flexible wall feeders for the small scale industries who are graduating into improvement of processes by process automation.