Manika Plastech Ltd

Manika Plastech Limited

Incorporated in April 1996 as Manika Moulds Private Limited and headquartered in Mumbai, Manika Plastech Limited manufactures injection molded rigid polymer packaging. Battery casings, being the plastic container and lid that houses a lead acid battery, were 56.54% of FY26 revenue; pails and thinwall containers, covering paint and lubricant buckets and food grade dairy tubs, were 30.51%; a painting facility at Hosur that paints plastic automotive components was 3.18%; and other operating revenue, largely resale of polymer granules, was 9.77%. Production runs from six manufacturing facilities at Dadra, Dehradun (two units), Hosur, Panipat and Una, one painting facility at Hosur, and warehouses at Pune and Jodhpur, with aggregate installed capacity of 29,200 MTPA across 93 injection molding machines. The company sold 21,023 MT to 242 customers across 24 states and union territories in FY26, with exports at 2.37% of revenue. Customers include Luminous Power Technologies, Livguard Energy Technologies, Genus Innovation, Grasim Industries, Kansai Nerolac Paints, JSW Paints, Indigo Paints, Jotun India, Vadilal Industries and TVS Motor Company. Technopak places the company at 1.31% of the organised consumer rigid plastic packaging market in FY25. The Kapadia family has run the business since incorporation and holds 100% of the pre-offer capital, 97.00% of it through VRIDAA Holding Trust.

Auditor: C N K & Associates LLP, Chartered Accountants         BRLM: Pantomath Capital Advisors Private Limited (sole)

Registrar: MUFG Intime India Private Limited         DRHP: 24 June 2025         RHP: 4 September 2026

Executive Summary:

Can apply for Listing Gains | Attractive Valuations, Mid to good quality business but has structural headwinds | GMP: ~25% (14 September 2026)

● At a market capitalization of ₹501 crore, 22.4x FY26 earnings and 8.6x FY26 EBITDA. That is undemanding against Mold-Tek Packaging at 32.34x and Hitech Corporation at 37.85x on 31 August 2026 prices, and the valuation is the strongest part of the case.

● The promoter family holds 100% of the pre-offer capital and 74.95% after the issue, has built the business over thirty years without a rupee of external equity, and is selling only ₹33 crore in the offer against a fresh issue of ₹92.50 crore.

● Revenue has grown from ₹360.77 crore to ₹435.98 crore over two years, EBITDA margin from 8.55% to 13.34%, and debt to equity has fallen from 0.86 to 0.60 on retained earnings alone. The company has a good set of clientele: Luminous, Livguard and Genus in batteries, Grasim, Kansai Nerolac, JSW Paints, Indigo and Jotun in paints, Vadilal in dairy and TVS Motor in painting, with the top twenty relationships averaging over ten years.

● The qualified institutional book stood at 0.35 times after two days of bidding, against retail at 2.18 times and non-institutional at 1.20 times. Institutional participation on the final day is the number to watch. On a grey market premium of around 25% we may apply in the IPO and treat the position as a tracking cheque rather than as an investment before doing a further deep dive. It would be interesting to see if the business can reduce its dependency on the battery segment while maintaining/improving the margins as the volume scales.

● Battery casings made up 56.54% of Manika's FY26 revenue, all of it built for lead-acid batteries. EV battery packs use aluminum alloys and carbon composites, while lithium-ion storage systems use aluminum and composite polymers, not the materials Manika currently works with. Home inverters and two/three-wheelers, the segments Manika relies on most, are already shifting to lithium-ion. If that continues, its core lead-acid casing business could lose relevance in its own key markets. This is a structural risk, not a minor headwind.

● The customers hold the bargaining power because each of them has several suppliers to choose from. An EBITDA margin of 13.34% (highest in 3 years) is not the margin of a differentiated product. Gross spread on the molding business itself was flat at ₹60,496 per tonne in FY26 against ₹60,323 in FY25, once trading and the painting division are taken out, neither of which carries any tonnage.

● Margin improvement is a raw material story, not a pricing story. In FY26 polymer cost per tonne fell 8.57% while realisation per tonne fell only 5.79%, so gross margin rose 144 basis points on a shrinking denominator while the absolute spread the company earns on each tonne it converts stayed flat at ₹60,496 against ₹60,323. Of the 479 basis points of EBITDA margin added since FY24, 454 came from the gross margin line. 

● On transition to Ind AS the company took the deemed cost exemption under Ind AS 101, which extinguished ₹84.56 crore of accumulated depreciation and reset the gross block from ₹169.09 crore to the net carrying amount of ₹84.53 crore. Plant and machinery alone was 58.97% written down at that date, being ₹69.26 crore of accumulated depreciation on ₹117.44 crore of gross block, and restarted at ₹48.18 crore with a fresh useful life. Accumulated depreciation is now 19.73% of gross block excluding freehold land, against 51.36% on the pre-reset basis, 31.94% at Mold-Tek Packaging and 52.51% at Hitech Corporation. 

● The management discussion attributes the fall in depreciation from ₹13.12 cr in FY24 to ₹12.54 cr in FY25 to a change in the useful life of plant and machinery made in Fiscal 2024, and the current schedule is disclosed at ten years for dies and moulds and fifteen years for other plant and machinery, but the previous life and the amount of the change are not disclosed. Both the deemed cost reset and the useful life revision fall in FY24, which is the first year of the three-year track record presented in the offer document. 

● The RHP ranks the company ninth in the organised consumer rigid plastic packaging market at 1.31% of revenue in FY25, behind Manjushree Technopack (7.50%), Alpla India (3.69%), TPAC Packaging (2.64%), Mold-Tek Packaging (2.50%), SSF Plastics (2.50%), Chemco Plastic (2.32%), Mangal Industries (approximately 1.80%) and National Polyplast (1.60%). The organised segment accounts for only 41.07% of the category, with the unorganised balance at 58.94%.

● The top five customers were 62.95% of FY26 revenue and the top ten 73.45%, with the largest customer at 25.24% and the second at 16.52%. Across the three years and the stub period the top five bands are 58% to 69%. The RHP states that only a few of these relationships are backed by long term supply agreements and that raw material increases are passed through subject to a predetermined time gap from the date of increase. The company's dependence on a select group of customers appears to be very high.

● Plants are built next to the customer, with Panipat 1 km from Grasim Industries, Una 5 km from Luminous and 6 km from Livguard, Hosur 3 km from Kansai Nerolac and 19 km from Luminous, and the Pune and Jodhpur warehouses 2 km from Jotun India and Indigo Paints respectively. The Dehradun facility was set up to serve Luminous and the Una facility to serve Livguard and Luminous. 

● Battery casing (largest revenue contributor) revenue fell 7.51% in FY26, from ₹266.50 cr to ₹246.49 cr, and its share of revenue dropped from 65.56% to 56.54%. FY26 growth came from pails and thinwall containers, up 17.89% to ₹133.02 cr, the painting division at ₹13.87 cr against ₹2.49 cr, and improved trading revenue. 

● ₹10.11 cr of the ₹52.31 cr machinery spend funds injection stretch blow molding, a technology the RHP states the company has no experience of operating, aimed at PET bottles for personal care, cosmetics, beverage and pharmaceutical packaging, where Manjushree Technopack and TPAC Packaging are established. Machines are to be sourced from Nissei ASB Machine Group. 

● Vendor approval runs about a year, with Jotun India (paint manufacturer) cited as taking more than a year and one thinwall customer approximately a year, and supply is subject to periodic customer audits across production planning, operating infrastructure, forecast management, order execution, delivery and inventory management. Customers of more than ten years standing were 42.34% of FY26 revenue and the top twenty relationships average over ten years.

Peer Comparison

Mold-Tek Packaging Limited and Hitech Corporation Limited are the two closest listed comparables, both injection molding converters of rigid plastic packaging serving paints, lubricants, food and pharmaceutical customers. Shaily Engineering Plastics Limited sits in the RHP peer set but is a precision polymer and medical device business and is excluded here. All figures below are FY26 other than the cash conversion line, which is the cumulative FY24 to FY26 position.

Business

● The company buys polypropylene co-polymer granules, blends them with colour masterbatch and recycled polymer, and forces the mix into a steel mold under pressure to produce a finished container. The company designs the product and the mold in house, has the mold built by third party toolmakers, and owns the mold.

● Battery casings are the container and lid of a lead acid battery, made to Japanese Industrial Standards and Deutsches Institut für Normung dimensions so they fit the customer's existing filling and labelling lines. Sizes run from 2.5 Ah to 1,000 Ah in polypropylene co-polymer and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, across automotive, inverter, railway, forklift, renewable energy and maintenance free series for data centres.

● Pails are injection molded buckets from 250 ml to 25 litres and 250 grams to 20 kg, in cylindrical, conical and square shapes, with tamper proof double locking and customized spouts, sold into paints, lubricants, coatings, fertiliser and construction chemical industries.

● The painting division at Hosur, set up in 2023, works on two models: job work painting of plastic automotive components supplied by the customer, and end to end service where the company procures the component from a supplier nominated by the customer, paints it and sells the finished part. Customers are TVS Motor Company and Ultraviolette Automotive. Revenue rose from ₹0.06 cr in FY24 to ₹13.87 cr in FY26 and ₹7.25 cr in Q1 FY27 alone.

Promoters and Leadership

● Nikunj Mohanlal Kapadia, 79, is Chairman and Non-Executive Director, a promoter and a director since incorporation, holding a bachelor's degree in science from the University of Mumbai and more than three decades in the industry. He drew nil remuneration in FY26 against ₹1.85 cr in FY24 and holds 0.75% of pre-offer capital.

● Munjal Nikunj Kapadia, 49, is Managing Director and a director since incorporation, with a diploma in plastics mold technology and a post diploma in plastic mold design from the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering & Technology, and the owner and president management programme at Harvard Business School. He runs business development, product development, procurement, finance, sales and marketing, and is also a director of Kabra Extrusion Technik Limited.

● Mihir Nikunj Kapadia, 47, Whole-time Director since June 1997, holds a diploma in plastics mold technology from the same institute and runs manufacturing operations across facilities and the thinwall container business. Pratik Nikunj Kapadia, 42, Whole-time Director since November 2001, holds the same qualification and runs the battery casings and pails divisions.

● The board has eight directors, comprising one Managing Director, two Whole-time Directors, one Non-Executive Director and four Independent Directors. Anand Shailesh Bathiya, 41, chairs the audit committee, is a chartered accountant and company secretary, partner at Bathiya Advisors LLP, president of the Bombay Chartered Accountants' Society and a director of IIFL Capital Services Limited. Chitradurga Narasimha Murthy, 75, is an IIT Kharagpur mechanical engineer and former chief operating officer and executive director of Huhtamaki PPL Limited. Sanjay Khubchand Israni, 51, is a solicitor and partner at Desai & Diwanji. Mita Dixit, 61, holds a doctorate from BITS Pilani, co-founded Equations Advisors and is a director of Hindustan Construction Company, Anuh Pharma and Shetron. All four were appointed on 11 March 2025.

Financials

FY26 and the prior two years are audited and restated; the three-month period ended 30 June 2026 is a special purpose interim period and is not annualised or comparable to a prior year quarter, which is not presented.