The Hindu Business Line : ‘High-speed coaches from BEML next year’

The medium-speed project will come up as a joint venture with a global major, which will be BEML’s technology partner. Production will be at a new third plant, according to BEML’s Chairman & Managing Director, Mr V.R.S. Natarajan.

He did not disclose the investment in the joint venture or its location. BEML currently has rail coach facilities in Bangalore and Kolar Gold Fields and has acquired majority stake in a Brazil assembly plant.

“This will be possible when we set up a greenfield plant to produce bogies for the proposed high-speed freight corridors and the work for the plant is likely to begin in 2008-09.

“This plant would produce 2,000 bogies in all types (metro to high-speed) per annum from the first year,” Mr Natarajan said on the sidelines of a SCOPE (Standing Committee on Public Enterprises) meet here on Tuesday.

Linking cities

The rail coaches maker with Rs 2,600-crore sales in 2006-07 is apparently eyeing the emerging opportunity of high-speed trains that State governments are considering to link cities like Bangalore to new airports; and the proposed high-speed freight corridors.

“These trains will be introduced in Bangalore and Hyderabad to connect the city with new airports. We are trying for suitable technology to produce these metro bogies,” he said.

Rs 5,000-CR GOAL

The defence enterprise expects to meet the Rs 5,000-crore turnover goal by 2009-10 – four years earlier than it had projected, Mr Natarajan said. It had set this target for 2013, its golden jubilee year.

The company was also riding on a boom in the mining construction sector — growing at 18 per cent in this segment since 2003 — and in metro rail projects. The order book of Rs 3,400 crore had doubled in one year, and BEML expected to touch a turnover of Rs 4,000 crore by March-end 2008.