BHEL Tiruchi goes for biggest capacity augmentation exercise

Tiruchirapalli, Apr 5 (UNI) The Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) unit here is going in for its biggest-ever exercise to raise its installed capacity from 4000 MW to 5750 MW per annum at an investment of Rs 190 crore.

Addressing the company's annual press conference here today, Executive Director V Gopalakrishnan said capacity augmentation was vital in the context of the company fixing a higher turnover target of Rs 5,000 crore for 200-07 for the Tiruchirapalli complex alone.

The Navaratna company had achieved a record turnover of Rs 3,608 crore for the financial year 2005-06, representing an increase of 59 per cent over the previous year's figure of Rs 2,273 crore.

The unit had also recorded an unprecedented 124 per cent increase in profit to reach Profit Before Tax (PBT) of Rs 358 crore to sharply reverse the trend in the previous years.

The massive increase in turnover was achieved by increasing the total annual output by over one lakh tonnes to reach an all time high of 3.20 lakh tonne during the year, he added.

Dr Gopalakrishnan said the BHEL unit here also went in for fresh recruitment after a gap of 22 years resulting in 119 skilled artisans being inducted from the open market. The recruitment drive will continue.The order book position had shown a healthy 22 per cent increase to Rs 8,200 crore.

BHEL Tiruchi had tied up with Alstom of France for technology assistance for super critical boilers of 800 MW and above in response to the country's requirement for large scale capacity addition to bridge the growing power shortfall.

The company also entered into an MoU with Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) for the development of combined power and sea-water desalination plants which will play a major role in meeting the demand for fresh water and power in coastal regions in the future.

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