PTC Industries setting up Rs 300-cr titanium recycling plant in Lucknow

Engineering component manufacturer PTC Industries is investing Rs 300 crore to set up a titanium recycling plant in Lucknow as it eyes to be an aerospace and defence supplier.

PTC Industries is a high-precision metal components provider for super-critical industrial applications, including defence and aerospace companies.

Its chairman and managing director Sachin Agarwal said the proposed capex is over and above the ongoing Rs 350-crore expansion at its titanium casting plant, and that the new investment will purely serve the aerospace and defence industry.

"We have a 50-acre campus near the Brahmos facility, which already is our customer, in the Lucknow Defence Corridor. The proposed titanium recycling facility will be the first of its kind plant in the private sector in the country," Agarwal told PTI here on Friday.

The proposed facility, which will come up over the next three to four years, will recycle the waste generated by the aerospace industry while making titanium castings.

Typically, while making titanium castings, as much as 80-90 per cent of the titanium sponge is wasted -- which is called the buy-to-fly ratio in the aerospace industry. We want to make this waste first-grade input for reuse and thus become the first company in the country to be doing so, Agarwal said and claimed that when completed India will become the third country, after Russia and France, to have this technology.

The Lucknow-based company mostly exports its metal castings and currently earns 85 per cent of its revenue from this, and the rest comes from public sector defence and aerospace units like DRDO, HAL, Brahmos, Bharat Dynamics and Mazagaon Docks among others. It does not supply to any private sector players now.

Agrawal said going forward, his focus will be defence and aerospace wherein he expects to enter big way in titanium castings and expects this segment to contribute 75 per cent of the top line over the next five years.

Recently, PTC secured an order from the French aerospace engineering company Safran Aircraft Engines to supply titanium castings (making him the only domestic firm doing so) and talks are also on with another French company Dassault Aviation, which makes the Rafale fighter jets, to supply the same.

He said PTC's wholly-owned subsidiary Aerolloy Technologies's new aerospace and defence facility was inaugurated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. The facility manufactures aerospace components and strategic materials, including titanium, cobalt, and nickel superalloys.

PTC earned Rs 26 crore in net income from a top line of Rs 227 crore in FY23 and expects revenue to reach around Rs 290 crore this fiscal, given the high order book.