Westinghouse plans huge investment in India

Mumbai: The US-based nuclear equipment maker Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC) is likely to invest “tens of millions of dollars” in India, which has caught global biggies' eye following the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.

“We will invest tens of millions of dollars as a minimum to tap India's nuclear power sector,” WEC's Director (Global Business Development), Mr Robert Pearce said here.

Mr Pearce said that Westinghouse, which is a Toshiba Group company, might look at forging joint venture with local players, sourcing from them and even outright acquisitions in areas such as engineering, construction and equipment making.

“We are in talks with the local players, but nothing has been finalised yet,” he said adding that the company would focus on “as much as localisation as possible” for its business here in line with other global markets such as China.

WEC offers a wide range of nuclear plant products and services to utilities throughout the world, including fuel, service and maintenance, instrumentation and control and advanced nuclear plant designs.

Its technology is the basis for well over 40 per cent of the world's operating nuclear power plants, including 60 per cent of those in the United States.

WEC has already inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the domestic engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to build 1,000 MW pressurised nuclear power plants in India.