In a bid to minimise the production cost to ensure more orders, Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) will spend Rs 1262 crores for modernisation purposes during the next three years in different phases. Talking to the media persons at HEC headquarters in Dhurwa, Chairman cum Managing Director (CMD) of HEC ltd Avijit Ghosh said that the focus will be on Foundry Forge Plant (FFP) involving Rs 662 crore to ensure that the cost of products manufactured by the HEC gets reduced.
“We have already moved towards modernisation as new machines are to be refurnished for which tenders have also been floated also participated by companies of Czech Republic, Country which has contributed a lot in establishing the HEC. The only condition is that quotations placed by them must be reasonable,” said the CMD. Ghosh also claimed that all the modernisation process of all furnaces will be completed within a month.
“As the future is of lPG and CNG, conversion of four of the blast furnaces have already been done while 12 more are to be converted very soon for which tender process has also been initiated,” said the CMD. It will ensure uniform heating of the furnace and will also be cost effective, he added.
The CMD said that efforts were also being made to get into a tie up with Railways as Czech Republic is known for the best technology in making track maintenance vehicles.
If Railways adopt mechanised maintenance of tracks in the Country, number of accidents could be minimised as most of the accidents in our Country are caused due to human failure, he added. He said that a meeting with the Railway Board Chairman will be held very soon in this regard to press the idea.
The CMD also discussed his recent visit to Czech Republic with Chief Minister Raghubar Das and shared his experiences with the media. He said that the CM during a press meet organised with the Czech media, explained how HEC was established with technical collaboration from Check Republic for two major units — Foundry Forge Plant and Heavy Machine Tools Plant and expected same association to be continued for future growth of HEC.
CMD said that, though they will not be able to achieve 100 per cent target, HEC will be very near to it this year.