Infrastructure major Punj Lloyd today announced it will form a joint venture with French firm Nuvia for providing engineering and support services to the country's emerging nuclear sector.
The joint venture will be incorporated between PL Engineering, a group company of Punj Llyod, and Nuvia India-- the Indian arm of the French company.
"It will be a 50:50 joint venture. However, the nittie-gritties of the joint venture including investments will be sorted out in next 120 days," Nuvia Group Chairman Jerome Stubler and Punj Lloyd Chairman Atul Punj told reporters here.
Nuvia, the nuclear arm of French construction and concession company Vinci SA, provides wide range of services, including construction, engineering, nuclear research and development, design, operations, among others to power producers and turnkey operators.
The proposed JV between the two companies would initially focus on providing services to the Indian nuclear sector, which is expected to increase its power generation capacity to 20,000 Mw by 2020 from the existing over 4,500 Mw.
The JV, once incorporated, would also look for opportunities in the growing markets such as Abu Dhabi and South Korea, Punj Lloyd Chairman Atul Punj said.
"By the time, the JV takes shape, we will certainly have some clients," Punj added.
Besides this, PL Engineering could also transfer its existing orders of about Rs 15 crore, received from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) to the proposed JV as a platform, Punj added.
"PL Engineering is already doing a lot of work for the NPCIL, so we are already into nuclear engineering. All the nuclear work will be done jointly both in India and abroad," Punj said.
The proposed joint venture will also focus on training and creating a pool of about 250 engineers in the nuclear services sector.
Indian nuclear sector, being treated as multi-billion dollar market by the global companies, is expected to be opened up once the deal with the United States gets concluded.
Besides this, India also have civil nuclear agreements with France, Russia and Canada and is looking to sign a similar deal with Japan soon.
France was the first country to open nuclear commerce with India after the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) granted a waiver to New Delhi in 2008.
