With demands on its plant estimated to exceed 8.5 lakh tonnes of steel this year, BHEL's Tiruchi unit, which producers boilers for thermal power plants, has come up with a plan to go multi-modal, in order to bring down logistics costs and time.

Basically, it intends to make a much larger use of rail and sea.

For starters, BHEL has hired a “big yard” at Sakthinagar, Uttar Pradesh, to which it will send most of the boiler equipment meant for customers in that part of the country.

The advantage is that a 40-rake train will take 3,500 tonnes of material from Tiruchi to Sakthinagar, non-stop, in about six days. At the yard, the cargo will be loaded on to trucks and moved to the sites.

This will take half the time and a third of the cost than otherwise, Mr A.V. Krishnan, Executive Director, BHEL, Tiruchi, told journalists here recently.

A 40-rake load of material will replace 170 trailers, he said.

BHEL wants “eight-nine more such yards”, Mr Krishnan said.

Similarly, BHEL intends to make a larger use of the two-year-old Karaikal port, which is only 140 km away from its plant. Tiruchi to Karaikal, thence by barge to Paradip or Haldia, and further on to customers in the Eastern region – will be the route.

BHEL is talking to Marg Ltd, the owner of Karaikal port, to develop a four-lane road between Tiruchi and the port, Mr Krishnan said.

Meanwhile, the Rs 660-crore expansion project (Phase-III), which will take the Tiruchi unit's capacity from 10,000 MW to 15,000 MW (worth of boilers), will be completed by December.

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