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Godrej Aerospace, a business unit of Godrej and Boyce, is planning to invest ₹250 crore to build a new facility at Khalapur in Maharashtra to boost defence and aerospace manufacturing. The project is expected to be completed in three years.
“We are putting up a facility for defence and aerospace products at Khalapur, which is about 62 km from Mumbai with a land size of more than 300 acres,” said Maneck Eddie Behramkamdin, Vice President and Business Head of Godrej Aerospace.
According to Behramkamdin, the company has also set aside ₹100 crore for research and development (R&D) in the next two years.
Additionally, the company is increasing its R&D spending as it intends to switch from build-to-print to build-to-spec. This means the company will design and build the components (built-to-spec) instead of just building products on instructions (built-to-print).
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Make in India program mandates 30-60% of home-made components, depending on the nature of the military purchase or where it’s purchased from.“We currently spend close to 30 to 40 crores annually on R&D for methods and tools in the defence and aerospace sector. To move to build-to-spec, we expect to spend close to 100 crore over the next two years,” Behramkamdin said.
The company expects to grow by three times in the next four to five years. The aerospace business is a relatively small business compared to the other units of G&B and contributed close to ₹300 crore of the total revenue. Godrej and Boyce generated ₹11,500 as revenue in FY22, said the Vice President.
Build-to-spec
Behramkamdin has said that international conglomerates like Airbus, Lockheed Martin, and Thales are looking for Indian partners now as the Indian space industry is open to private businesses.
“We are in talks with them about our pedigree in propulsion engines. It is an opportunity, and we have a chance to grab some of those partnerships,” he said, adding, “They are also looking at designing as an option with us. So, we are trying to work with certain partners to design the particular components.”
Godrej Aerospace is working on two defence projects with HAL and DRDO to design the sub-components of Tejas aircraft.
“These come under BTS, and we have a consortium with a start-up called Zeus Numerix for this project,” he said.
Although the company is working in a consortium with start-ups, they are also planning to invest in a few of them, he added.
Godrej Aerospace is a tier-1 manufacturer of precision and hi-tech aerospace components, assemblies, and systems, executing global projects that serve the defence, space, and aviation sectors.
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