The Hindu Business Line : Areva T&D to merge 3 group cos

Tell us a little bit about your business, and what is the plan ahead because you are merging all your group companies. When does that happen? Where does business stand now?

We are going to merge the three companies of T&D, which should take about two months. In fact, we have already informed the stock exchange last month, and it is already available on our Web site.

The T&D industry is growing at the rate of 19-20 per cent and we have been beating the growth. The ultra mega projects which have been announced, and with the number of projects that are coming up, the T&D business is poised for growth overall.

Could you spilt growth between your various businesses; on the core transmission and distribution side, on electrical products like motors and meters? Which businesses will contribute more to revenue streams, and what are the individual growth rates of these separate businesses?

I normally discuss the T&D part of the business because the motor business would be taken out of the T&D business in due course of time.

So, when we discuss the T&D business, it comes to soft transformers, high voltage switchgears, medium voltage switchgears, the energy management systems in the packages, 400 kV and 800 kV systems.

All these are growing in the country because as soon as the ultra mega projects start coming up, the evacuation will become modern, extra high voltage, which is 765 kV.

We are setting up the first station at Sipat for 600 MW of NTPC plant. We are evacuating the power at 765 kV. More such service stations will come up.

We feel that once we have the technology and products, the area of transmission and distribution will grow faster.

Apart from that we have to reduce the transmission and distribution losses, which are presently very high.

Therefore, any electricity board's first priority is to make sure that not only power gets evacuated but also the distribution losses are reduced, and that is the money, which is lying on the table for reduction.

Could you give us a ballpark figure of what is the expected growth, given the opportunities that you spoke about?

At present, the industry is growing at 20 per cent. It used to be 16 per cent last year.

As far as our company's growth is concerned, we will be beating the industry levels.