The Hindu Business Line : BHEL arms investing Rs 100 cr on expansion in Tiruchi

BHEL ancillaries find the going so good that they are investing some Rs 100 crore in expansion. Many units have started investing in acquiring capabilities to handle more jobs while others have plans to do so.

Officials of BHEL Small Scale Industries Association say that this bout of investments started last year and would go on for another year.

To these ancillaries, business is flowing both from BHEL and non-BHEL sources, a reward for their reach-out efforts they did when BHEL itself was order-starved.

In 2003-04, BHEL gave about 60,000 tonnes of material to its ancillaries for conversion. In the following year, this `loading' rose to 90,000 tonnes, or some Rs 400 crore of billing. The loading is expected to go up to 1.2 lakh tonnes in the current financial year.

However, ancillaries face one critical constraint: Labour. Today there are about 10,000 people working in the 300-odd companies, which are mostly metal fabricators.

Mr Rajappa Rajkumar, President, BHEL Small Scale Industries Association says that at least another 5,000 hands would be needed. The challenge is to hire the right people and give them training.

The association is trying to hire from nearby technical institutes. The department of science and technology has helped with a grant for training, using which some 60 people have been trained in welding.

"If there is a good infrastructure for training, we can go up to 2.5 lakh tonnes," Mr K.G. Muralidharan, Secretary of the Association, told Business Line.

Tiruchi Engineering and Technology Cluster Ltd, will at least partly provide the solution. The (non-profit) company, set up under the Central Government's `cluster development programme', is awaiting the Rs 50-crore grant from the Government. Once the money comes in, a number of facilities are to be set up, including, a common training centre, a common design centre, testing and calibration centre, common manufacturing facilities, common marketing facilities and even a common Web site.

The outlay for these common facilities is put at Rs 65 crore. The other Rs 15 crore is to be brought in by the 120-odd members of the company.

Once these facilities (including the training centre) come up, BHEL's ancillaries feel that jobs could flow to the cluster from all over India. The full use of the Rs 100-crore investment in capacity expansion would be felt then.

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