BHEL's new plant to go on stream in April

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is planning to commission its piping plant in Thirumayam in April this year, even as it is modernising its seamless steel tubes plant at Thiruchirappalli (Trichy) with an outlay of Rs 160 crore.

AV Krishnan, executive director (boiler division), BHEL-Trichy, told reporters: “We will commission the Thirumayam plant in April, which is being set up with an outlay of Rs 300 crore.”

The plant capacity is 25,000 tonne per annum (tpa).

“We are planning to make 17,000 tonne of piping next fiscal. We have 40 acre for the plant and we are looking for an additional 60 acre for employees’ township and shipping (storage) area,” he said. The company has hired 600 employees for its new plant while 200 more would be needed.

Krishnan said the modernisation of the seamless steel tubes plant at Trichy will get over in 2013 and the focus will be on rolling out alloy steel while carbon steel would be bought from outside.

“The plant capacity is 90,000 tpa. Our steel tubes need is around 300,000 tpa, and the balance has to be bought from outside. While the focus will be on making alloy steel in-house, we will outsource the carbon steel,” Krishnan said.

On the order book size, he said, BHEL as a whole, had an order book of around Rs 1.47 lakh crore, of which the boiler division’s share was around Rs 37,000 crore.