BHEL sales up 19% at Rs 49,301 cr

The PSU company will set up a unit near Nagpur

The state run power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), made its highest-ever turnover of Rs 49,301 crore in 2011-12 fiscal, registering a growth of 19.4 per cent over the previous year.

BHEL Chairman & Managing Director B Prasada Rao, told reporters here that profit before tax surged 17.8 per cent at Rs 10,001 crore, during the year, compared to Rs 8,487 crore in the year before. He also said that the highest-ever interim equity dividend of 136 per cent was paid for 2011-12.

The Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited pursued aggressive in-house efforts and encouraged innovation in line with the ‘decade of innovations (2010-2020)’ declared by the Government of India.

As a result, R&D investment of the company has registered 18 per cent growth over the last financial year at Rs. 1162 crore. The company also filed the highest-ever 351 patents and copyrights in a year, he said.

In the year, the highest ever commissioning was achieved by the company for power utilities totalling to 8410 MW. In addition, BHEL also commissioned 535 MW of captive/industrial sets in the country and 325 MW in the overseas market taking the total commissioning/synchronization to 9270 MW in last fiscal.

Fabrication unit

Further, BHEL will set up a fabrication unit in Sakoli, about 80 km near Nagpur, in Bhandara district.

“BHEL is in the process of acquiring 200 acres of land to set up a fabrication plant to meet its own requirement for electrical machines,” Head of BHEL Power Sector (Western Region) K S Mathur, told reporters .

He said the land acquisition talks from both the state government and private parties was in an advanced stage and may be over during the current fiscal. After that, the company will start the work on the plant.

One such plant exists in Trichy and since Bhandara unit will be located in central India, it would help in dispatching fabricated parts quickly, Mathur said.

He said the company’s turnover for FY12 jumped by 22 per cent at Rs 1480 crore (western region) compared to the previous fiscal.

Demand-Supply Gap

Mathur admitted that there was 20 per cent gap between supply and demand though the company has augmented its production capacity from 6,000 mw to 20,000 mw capacity generation units.

The Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited recently commissioned one unit of 500 mw to MahaGenco’s Khaparkheda thermal power plant near here, two units of 500 mw each to its facilities in Bhusaval, North Maharashtra and 351 mw unit to Gujarat State Energy Generation Ltd’s unit at Hazira, he said.