Come March 2012, the Tiruchi unit of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, which makes boilers for thermal power plants, will see its capacity rise to 15,000 MW.

The completion of the ongoing Rs 1,700-crore expansion project is significant in the context of the growing demand for power plant equipment. The 13th Five Year Plan is expected to set a target of 100,000 MW for the plan period (2013-17), compared with 62,000 MW for the 12 Plan period.

The expansion is critical to BHEL's fortunes too, because several new players (such as L&T-Mitsubishi, BGR Hitachi, Toshiba and Thermax-Babcock) have entered the fray and the incumbent monolith, BHEL, would need capacity to defend its market.

Order book

BHEL's order book is growing. The power project business alone saw fresh orders worth Rs 46,000 crore booked in 2010-11. Of this, the orders relevant to Tiruchi alone amounted to Rs 39,121 crore, up 12 per cent over the previous year.

BHEL Tiruchi, which accounted for about 28 per cent of the company's turnover of Rs 43,000 crore in 2010-11, saw a record level of activity during the year – it processed 600,000 tonnes of steel .

Part of the expansion project is the installation of a giant, 8,000-tonne hydraulic press that costs Rs 120 crore. The press is used to bend 20-cm-thick steel plates into U-shaped sections, which are welded to form tubular drums.

Addressing a press conference here today, BHEL's Executive Director in-charge of the Tiruchi unit, Mr A V Krishnan, said that the company was able to secure orders from customers who had placed their previous orders with Chinese vendors.

A good example of this is the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd, which has placed orders for two sets of 500 MW each. The utility had previously bought Chinese equipment and had run into a host of problems.

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