| A M Naik, chairman and managing director L&T said, the company had to up its capex this year also to service the huge order backlog. The company now has a total order booking of Rs 18,000 crore, of which Rs 14,000 crore was booked this fiscal. |
| He added that the export order booking, excluding the IT business, alone amounted to Rs 2,500 crore, with China accounting for Rs 500 crore. The company was on course to grow 20 per cent to Rs 13,000 crore this year. This projection comes in the wake of a 30 per cent topline growth last fiscal. |
| Further, the investments could also flow towards some of the new activities like components and sub-assemblies for aviation that L&T has been mulling. |
| While it is eyeing opportunities in the high-end infrastructure area, the company is close to shedding more non-core activities. After cement, it looks like curtains for its bottle division. |
| A very small operation that failed to meet targets, Naik said, the company is in talks with a few parties to hive it off. |
| Naik was also bullish on the engineering and construction divisions prospects overseas, especially West Asia. Dubbing the growing hostility in the Gulf as isolated to Iraq, he said that L&T would strive to gain a foothold in nuclear, space, deep-water technology and clean-fuel projects. |
| The company, with the aim of evolving into a regional brand, has already made inroads in West Asia by bagging turnkey projects in hydrocarbon, power, cement and chemicals. |
| In China, the company is scouting for its maiden turnkey project. It's success there has been limited to supply of coal gassification equipment and power plant reactors to the tune of Rs 265 crore. |
| At present, the engineering and construction division contributes 62 per cent to the topline, while cement, electrical and electronics account for 26 per cent and 8 per cent respectively. |
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