Rs 300cr defence production facility likely

Enthused by the performance of pilot plants set up for production of high energy materials, the defence research establishment has impressed upon the Centre the need to set up a research-cum-production facility that would serve the requirements of ordnance factories and other such establishments.

"The facility is being planned to be set up at Nasik at an approximate investment of Rs 300 crore over a period of four to five years," said M Natarajan, scientific advisor to the defence minister.

He was inaugurating the 5th International High Energy Materials Conference and Exhibit - 2005 (HEMCE-2005) at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) auditorium here today.

The facility, to be scaled over a period of time, would start with a limited production of a variety of rocket systems besides research in process engineering, he said.

To facilitate the interaction between the academia and the defence labs, Natarajan said, while the government agreed to establish four centres, the first one was already commissioned at University of Hyderabad (UoH) and the second one at University of Calcutta was ready for commissioning. The centres attached to universities would stimulate young minds to take up defence research, reduce trial and error method in developing new materials and also open new avenues and approaches to research problems.

In his key note address, M S Ananth, director, IIT Madras, said that the institute was recently given 6.5 acres of additional land by the state government to start a research park on the lines of centres at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.

The research park to be completed by December 2006 would provide research space to corporates and, adjunct faculty and industry interaction to students, he said.

Some of the topics that would come up for discussion at the three-day conference are synthesis and characterisation of new high energy materials, explosives, pyro-techniques, advanced propellants, speciality materials, materials modelling, hazards, safety, risk management and safe disposal of these materials.

About 300 delegates including 20 foreigners will be attending the conference organised by the High Energy Materials Society of India (HEMSI) and sponsored by various DRDO laboratories, ISRO, ordnance factories and the department of Science and Technology.