Bhel lines up equipment JVs with UK firm, Toshiba

Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) is close to sewing up agreements with two foreign companies for joint ventures in forging and transmission sectors, a senior official from the state-owned power equipment manufacturer said.

“A team from UK’s Sheffield Forgemasters is arriving on Jan 9. We are close to signing a memorandum of understanding with them. The joint venture will manufacture forging equipment to cater to the super-critical segment and the demand expected in 5-10 years from the civil nuclear power market,” the official said.

Bhel currently manufactures forging equipment for the sub-critical power plants at its Haridwar plant in Uttarakhand.

Super-critical boilers, the mainstay of a power plant, are highly efficient boilers, and are economical when used in power plants with a single-unit size of at least 800 MW. They use less fuel, yield more power output and operate under very high pressure and temperature.

The company is also close to signing a pact with Japan’s Toshiba for equipment manufacturing and engineering, procurement and construction business in the transmission sector.

The government plans to add 78,577 mw capacity in the ongoing Eleventh Five Year Plan (that ends Mar 2012) and another 82,000 MW under the Twelfth Plan.

The transmission system that evacuates power from the generating stations will thus have to be enhanced manifold.

Bhel was also in talks with French company Areva for a tie-up but the two failed to reach a consensus over the terms of the agreement.

“Areva wanted Bhel to concentrate on the low-margin equipment manufacturing business, while it would focus on the high-margin EPC business which we did not agree to,” the official said.

Bhel currently manufactures transmission equipment like transformers at Jhansi and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh and circuit-breakers at Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.

Under another technology transfer pact, Bhel last month tied up with General Electric (Italy) to make compressors for the oil and gas sector.

“We would have supplied over 400 compressors to the oil sector for use in refineries. We want to make compressors of higher grade to service natural gas transportation,” he said.

Shares of Bhel today closed at Rs 1,412.05 on the National Stock Exchange, up 0.7 per cent from Thursday.