1. At a Glance
Ladies and gentlemen, gather ‘round for a tale of a paper company that makes more losses than pages. Shree Rama Newsprint Ltd (SRNL), the Surat-based member of the Riddhi Siddhi Group, just dropped its Q2 and H1 FY26 results — and let’s just say the paper division remains a ghost story while the packaged water unit does all the heavy lifting.
As of November 27, 2025, the stock trades at ₹29.8, with a market cap of ₹438 crore, and a Book Value of ₹–2.34 (yes, negative — the financial equivalent of a black hole). The company recorded H1 FY26 losses of ₹2,048.51 lakh, while current liabilities exceed current assets by a jaw-dropping ₹10,165 lakh.
Revenue for Q2 FY26 stands at ₹6.83 crore, down 24% YoY, and PAT sits at –₹7.95 crore. Meanwhile, its debt mountain continues at ₹376 crore, and return ratios look like a failed ECG: ROE –73.3%, ROCE 1.87%, and EPS –₹7.22.
So if you ever wondered what happens when a paper mill morphs into a water bottle factory with massive liabilities — SRNL is your live case study in corporate reincarnation.
2. Introduction
Once upon a time, in the industrial plains of Gujarat, there stood a proud paper manufacturer called Shree Rama Newsprint. Its giant machines roared with the promise of newsprint and writing paper for generations of Indian readers. Then came the energy crisis, soaring coal prices, and a waste paper shortage — and the company’s fortunes folded faster than the paper it made.
By December 2021, the paper division was shut down. By December 2022, its workers were retrenched. Since then, the company has essentially been surviving on its bottled water business — a diversification move that might have started as a side hustle but now keeps the lights on.
While its paper presses remain silent, SRNL has been busy offloading plant and machinery, fighting land disputes, and begging the gods of liquidity to keep the creditors at bay. The irony? A company once obsessed with recycling waste paper is now trying to recycle its entire business model.
Its stock price tells a twisted story — up 72% over the past year, despite losses deep enough to drown an auditor. Why? Because in Indian markets, hope is an asset class.
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
SRNL technically still calls itself a paper manufacturer. But operationally, it’s now a packaged water bottler with a defunct paper plant that’s being slowly sold off.
Here’s how the businesses break down:
- Paper Division (Ghost Mode):
Once capable of producing 1.5 lakh MTPA of writing and printing paper and equipped with two fully automatic de-inking plants, this unit has been non-operational since December 2021. The company even planned a slump sale to dispose of these assets. - Packaged Water Bottling Division (The Lifeline):
The division manufactures 44.5 lakh cases (approx. 16.2 crore bottles) annually. In FY23, it contributed a whopping 95% of total revenue, while the rest came from scrap sales and interest income.
In short: the “newsprint” in the company’s name is now nostalgic. The paper may have died, but the bottles flow on. The group continues to operate under the Riddhi Siddhi umbrella, which itself has stakes in starch, ethanol,
