Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) has set up a taskforce through which it is planning to seek Green Channel for speeding up transit of consignments bound for power projects, through inter-state borders.
The public sector company said that the task force will take up the idea to the Ministry of Surface Transport.
Addressing a Transporters' Meet & Awards function organised at BHEL Tiruchirappalli, A V Krishnan, executive director, BHEL – Tiruchirappalli said that this would be a significant benefit both for manufacturers and transporters of equipment for power projects across the country and would help to speed up project execution.
Unlike in the past when setting up the rail link used to be the first step in project execution enabling use of the railways, now there is not much time and roads are the only way, he added for transportation of project consignments, the speed at which the Indian power sector was growing meant that there was no longer time for setting up such infrastructure and construction had to start almost as soon as the land for the project was acquired.
Consequently, almost 80 per cent of the consignments had to be transported by road particularly in the case of greenfield projects,” he said.
Krishnan noted transporters have helped BHEL Tiruchirappalli complex to despatch a record 5,50,000 Metric Tonnes (MT) of boiler components during fiscal 2009-10 to cross Rs 10,000 crore turnover, two years ahead of the unit's 5-year Strategic Plan schedule.
Pointing out that during the current year, BHEL Tiruchirappalli was fully geared up to meet its challenging target of over 7,00,000 MT of despatches, Krishnan called upon transporters to augment not only their facilities in terms of the number of large capacity and multiple-axle trailers but also their technology by installing Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to enable continuous tracking of consignments.
Krishnan added BHEL Tiruchirappalli needing to despatch 2500 MT to 3000 MT every single day during the current year, the daily requirement of trailers would be in the order of 150 to 200 throughout the year which presented a huge opportunity for transporters. BHEL Tiruchirappalli would also be despatching 70 to 80 boiler drums during 2010-11 of which over 60 would have to be transported by road using hydraulic trailers.
