BEL to expand support to Indian Navy

Navratna defence PSU, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), is setting up a product support centre at Kalamassery in Kochi. This will be its third product support centre being set up exclusively to cater to the requirements of the Indian Navy. BEL has already set up similar centres in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam.

The centre will be housed at the Kinfra hi-tech park in Kalamassery, the company said in a press release. It will be spread over 6.2 acres taken on lease for 90 years from Kinfra (Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation), a state government undertaking. The building will be spread over 1,000 square metres at an investment of Rs 3 crore to Rs 5 crore. It will be ready in about 24-30 months.

The new product support centre will address the needs of the Indian Navy, National Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) of DRDO, Cochin Shipyard and BEL’s outsourcing partners, KELTRON. BEL uses designs from NPOL for developing products for the Indian Navy and sometimes it also jointly develops designs, a company official said.

BEL also supplies electronics and communication systems to Cochin Shipyard for its ships. BEL’s other customers include the Army, Air Force, paramilitary, Coast Guard, police, Doordarshan, All India Radio, Department of Telecommunications among others. Nearly 80-85 per cent of the company’s annual sales turnover comes from products sold to the defence services. During 2007-08, BEL achieved turnover of Rs 4,102.54 crore. It spent 5.1 per cent of its revenues on research and development last year.