L&T to set up steel wheel mfg plant

Mumbai: Engineering and construction company Larsen and Toubro has secured a Rs 1,047.60-crore order from the Indian Railways for setting up a cast steel wheel manufacturing plant at Saran (Chhapra) district of Bihar.

The plant will have the capacity to manufacture 1,00,000 cast steel railroad wheels annually and is expected to help the railways meet the huge shortage of wheels for the rolling stock, besides reducing the dependence on imports.

The project is scheduled for completion in two years. The work for the turnkey project involves engineering, procurement and construction of the plant including civil, electrical, design, supply and commissioning of plant.

L&T, in a press release, said this was the first instance of an Indian company executing a project of such complexity without foreign collaboration. The only other such plant, set up in Bangalore by the Railways in the early 1980s, was with US collaboration.

Last year, L&T launched a dedicated railway business unit to target the emerging opportunities in rail sector such as the dedicated freight corridor, railway station modernisation, systems for power plants, ports, steel plants and rail based urban mass transportation systems such as monorails, metro and light rail transport systems.