Railway PSU Braithwaite & Co will take over the Howrah unit of Burn Standard as a part of its expansion plan with an eye on achieving a turnover of Rs 3,000 crore by 2023. Burn Standard, another railway PSU which manufactured wagons, has been closed down by an order of the NCLT in March 2018.
Yatish Kumar, Braithwaite’s chairman and managing director, told FE since both the PSUs are under the ministry of railways, it would simply be a transfer of assets. “Burn Standard’s Howrah unit has 25 acres and its plant and machinery were operational until 2017. The unit has the capacity to produce 1,000 wagons a year and has a well placed foundry unit. So, the takeover would add a lot of value to Braithwaite,” Kumar said.
On the other hand, the Union government, which kept Braithwaite in the disinvestment list way back in 2010 is not considering any disinvestment as of now. “Our road map is to achieve a Rs 3,000-crore turnover by 2023 following which we will initiate for divestment,” Kumar said.
The company clocked a turnover of Rs 317 crore and reported a net profit of Rs 9.41 crore in FY 19 against a turnover of Rs 130 crore and net profit of Rs 2.6 crore in FY18. “In FY20, we are going to achieve a turnover of Rs 650 crore and a net profit of Rs 20 crore at least, which means we are on an exponential growth trajectory. The Parliament has approved increasing the authorised capital from Rs 95 crore to Rs 200 crore and there is a scope that the government would infuse Rs 105 crore worth of equity,” Kumar said.
He said the company has diversified from only wagon manufacturing to wagon repairing, crane operation and maintenance and reconditioning steel locomotives, and has given equal weightage to services as to manufacturing. “Our ratio of services to manufacturing is 45:55 at present,” Kumar said, adding that the company has expanded its service centres for wagon repairing at Waltair, Katni, Mughalsarai, Raipur, Bhilai and Satna.
There will be further additions to it in the coming days. For making bridges and foot over bridges, Braithwaite has tied up with Jindal steel, while it has got operation and maintenance contract of cranes fromSAIL’s Bhilai steel plant. The company has been aggressively bidding for putting up new cranes and getting O&M contracts from the ports. It had tied up with Kirow Cranes and Fanuc of Germany for design engineering of cranes and machines. Braithawaite is looking to become an O&M partner of the government.
The company’s present order book is worth Rs 1,000 crore. It is expecting to get further orders from the National Diary Development Board for manufacturing 90 milk tanks, that are fitted with the railways.