For many others in Melbourne, Orica’s hometown, the worst of the pandemic has passed, but inside the headquarters of the explosives giant, the replicas of COVID-19 are too real.

Newly appointed executive leader Sanjeev Gandhi first ships to India, where the terrible history of the pandemic threatens Orica’s cash team and that of the Australian coal mines That Orica also sells.

The group’s effects on the six-year period through March 31 show other scars: depressed call in Indonesia and Mexico for blockades, disruptions in Latin America, inflated chain prices, and postponed projects in Norway and the Middle East.

Even favorable winds from the post-pandemic era influenced Orica’s results. Rising commodity costs have driven the Australian dollar upwards; this hurts the semester that has just disappeared and will also have a $40 million effect on second-half earnings.

Gandhi, however, sees something soft at the end of the tunnel. Underlying earnings before interest and taxes for the first part of the year of $152 million may have dropped by 51%, but at least they were in line with the lowest forecasts published in February, when Gandhi’s predecessor Alberto Calderón said goodbye.

There are signs that sales volumes are expanding as the COVID-19 crisis ends and the giant deployment of Orica’s SAP formula nevertheless begins to stabilize. Gandhi says Orica’s balance sheet is also improving, with the emergence of loose money and the fall of borrowers.

The new CEO also made the difficult resolve to sell Minova, Orica’s subsidiary that sells products that miners make their allocation ground more solid and secure.

Unity has struggled to locate his position in Orica’s empire for years, although Gandhi hopes that its pandemic-resistant functionality will help Orica get a smart price.

But the rest of fiscal year 2021 appears to be slow work, with headwinds against currencies, prices related to SAP deployment, and a weak call wallet to connect to COVID-19 most likely to any symptoms of expansion in the broader global recovery.

Orica’s inventories shrugged 4% on Thursday to end the day at $13. 32, but have dropped 13% since the beginning of the year in a market with a 4. 5% increase. The maximum value of the newest inventory, above $24 in November 2019, is far away.

A big win for Gandhi is that he can now succeed with consumers in Australia and North America and showcase his high-tech, higher-margin products, adding WebGen wireless electronic explosions and the cloud-based BlastIQ suite, which enables miners to store, analyze and use blasting knowledge to optimize their drilling and blasting processes.

Gandhi is excited about a new addition to the BlastIQ suite called Advanced Vibration Management.

The software allows miners to expect more, as it should be, the vibrations of an explosion and, in particular, to find out how they could close next to the structures, which would possibly be civil structures, such as a construction or an electric tower, but it can also be a delicate cultural site.

While Rio Tinto’s Juukan Gorge crisis is still new to the collective reminiscence of the resource sector, it is no surprise to hear Gandhi say that new software is very interested.

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