Monnet Ispat & Energy today reported a marginal 3.19 per cent rise in its third quarter net profit to Rs 70.18 crore even as sales dipped due low price of both steel and power during the quarter.

The company had reported a Rs 68.01 crore net profit in the October-December quarter of the last fiscal on net sales of Rs 372.19 crore, it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the company said that its Rs 3,500 crore, 1.5 million tonne integrated steel plant at Raigarh in Chattisgarh would commission from June onwards and be fully operational in six-nine months from there on.

"This would help us to treble our topline to over Rs 6,000 crore from around Rs 1,800 crore now," Sandeep Jajodia, Executive Vice Chairman, Monnet Ispat, told PTI.

The company had clocked Rs 1,480 crore total income in 2009-10.

Monnet Ispat and Energy clocked Rs 347.14 crore net sales in the third quarter of the current fiscal mainly due to the subdued performance of its power business which dipped to Rs 77.03 crore during the reporting quarter from Rs 146.77 crore a year-ago on lower tariffs.

Steel business, however, remained in the positive terrain with an increase of Rs 21.36 crore turnover compared to a year ago period.

In order to hedge itself from the fluctuations of the raw material prices, the company is looking to acquire one more coal assets abroad for which it has set aside a minimum of USD 100 million corpus. It has already acquired two coal blocks in Indonesia.