The focus of government and private companies such as Steel Authority of India (SAIL), Rashtriya Ispat Nigam?(RINL), NMDC and Jindal Steel and Power on setting up new plants is turning out to be big business for the private engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies like Essar Projects.
AV?Amarnath, chief executive officer of Essar Projects? special business unit (SBU) for minerals and metals, said that this year the revenue may not grow at the expected rate of 15-20% due to delays in some of the steel companies? expansion plans, but said the company expects an assured revenue increase of 10-12%.
?Last year (2011-12) we had business revenue of R3,500 crore and that should cross minimum R3,800 crore this year. It may be even more as many of our projects in foreign countries will also start generating revenues from this year onwards,? he said.
The SBU is looking at higher orders from the international markets too. Of Essar Projects total order book of about R33,000 crore, minimum 10% of it comes from the overseas market. ?Amarnath said, the foreign orders are expected to increase to at least 25%.
?A significant amount of this would come from the metal sector. We are already in talks with many steel, metal companies in Indonesia, Singapore, South America to set up their pallet and other plans,? he said.
The metals and mineral SBU has many clients including SAIL, NMDC, RINL, Tata Steel, Bhushan Steel and fertiliser company IIFCO. It has already constructed many steel, pelletisation plans including the blast furnaces, cold rolling units etc.
Amarnath said the present delays in the steel sector do not affect the order book much as the company is trying to expand to other segments such as setting up plants for aluminum and copper smelting, ferro alloys etc.
?There are many comparatively smaller companies who want to set up aluminum, ferro alloy plans in the country. We are going to tap that too,? he said.