BHEL to spend Rs 9,000-mn on R&D by 2011

Hyderabad: The Corporate Research and Development of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) plans to spend around Rs 500 crore on R&D during the current financial year.

For the financial year ended March 31, 2008, the company spent Rs 464 crore on R&D activities against Rs 239 crore spent in 2006-07 fiscal, an increase of 83 per cent.

“The increase in spending is necessary since products and systems to be developed in the immediate future are bound to be highly technology intensive,” the Group General Manager, Dr A.L. Chandraker, said while addressing a press conference.

The company is looking at spending around Rs 900 crore on various R&D activities by 2011-12.

Dr Chandraker also said that a turnover of Rs 2,936 crore was achieved during the fiscal under review through the company’s commercialisation of products and systems developed through in-house R&D.

“This amounts to 13.6 per cent of the total group’s turnover and during the current financial year we expect the turnover through the company’s commercialisation of products and systems developed by Corporate R&D to be around Rs 3,500 crore. During the 2006-07 fiscal, the turnover achieved was Rs 2,510 crore,” he said.

BHEL during the last financial year established a new centre called the Centre for Intelligent Machines and Robotics (CIMAR).

“The CIMAR is the fifth centre of excellence and has been established at the Corporate R&D with an investment of Rs 5.03 crore. It is equipped with advanced equipment and software for continuing R&D in manufacturing automation, with the objectives of cycle time reduction, enhancement of productivity and quality,” Dr Chandraker said.

BHEL has also commissioned a gas-fired spray pyrolysis system for pilot-scale synthesis of nano materials. It has also developed a compact 65 KW permanent magnet generator which is suitable as pilot exciter for 500 MW and 800 MW turbo generators.

“During the year, BHEL has filed 175 patents and copyrights which takes the total number of patents and copyrights filed by the company till now to 664,” he said.