Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel) will improve quality and cut down on delivery time, in a bid to thwart attempts by Chinese power equipment manufacturers to woo power generation companies with low-cost machines.
The state-run company’s power equipment capacities are based in Hyderabad, Haridwar and Trichy.
“One of the major concerns as far as Bhel was concerned, was about the delivery schedule. It was said that Bhel was taking more time for delivering the machine. We have cut down the time significantly now and the way the order book is building confirms the fact that equipment buyers still value Bhel and there is no way they can go away to any other overseas supplier,” executive director K L Vasudeva Rao said.
Rao said buyers had realised that price differential doesn’t hold the key for long-term success, since after-sales is crucial. “Our maintenance and support services have been significantly ramped up over a period of time. In fact, we have some clients who had evaluated the Chinese equipment very closely and decided to come back to Bhel,” Rao said.
“While we are confident of taking care of the domestic market as usual, we are now working to expand our footprint by targeting the export market. For 2008-09,
we had export orders of Rs 591 crore from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Senegal, Iran and Dubai.”
