Kolkata, May 23 Texmaco Rail & Engineering Ltd, a Adventz group company, is expecting 30-35 per cent growth in overall business in 2023-24 on the back of a strong order book and buoyant demand from the Indian Railways. The company had a total turnover of ₹2,243 crore in FY-23.
According to Hemant Bhuwania, chief financial officer, Texmaco, the company’s order book is close to ₹9,000 crore at present. The Indian Railways is likely to come out with a tender for around 50,000 wagons by end of June or early July this year. The company is hopeful of bagging some orders from the tender.
The government’s focus on growth in rolling stock and rail infra segment is likely to augur well for the company, which has close to 74 per cent of its order book coming from the heavy engineering business.
“During the first quarter of FY-23 we bagged an order for 20,067 wagons valuing approximately ₹6,450 crore to be executed over a period of 39 months. This is the largest ever single wagon order released by the Indian Railways on the company. The prototype wagon got approved at the end July and thereafter we started ramping up production from close to 500 wagons in the second quarter to around 1400 wagons by the fourth quarter of last financial year. This year we are expecting a further ramp up in production of around 35 per cent in rolling stock segment,” Bhuwania told BusinessLine.
Apart from Indian Railways the company has also been witnessing lot of enquiries from private companies such as Vedanta, NTPC and DP World among others. This would give a further boost to the business.
The company has entered into a 50:50 joint venture agreement with Nymwag for manufacture of wagons and fabricated components for domestic as well as export market.
The company’s steel foundry division, which had achieved a production growth of 43 per cent over the previous year in terms of volume, is all geared up to boost its production with improved productivity and addition of certain balancing equipment and infrastructure.
This apart, the government’s focused approach on completion of freight corridor and upgrading the rail infrastructure is likely to be a positive catalyst for the rail EPC division of the company. During FY-23, the division was successful in closing certain old orders, outstanding for a long time. The division is presently focusing on booking orders for short tenure contracts and its expeditious execution and contract closure activities.
Exports to grow
Exports which account for nearly 10 per cent of its total revenue at present is expected to increase to over 15 per cent in FY-24 backed by a good demand both for steel foundry and freight car.
During FY-23, the company executed the design and built export order of 100 wagons to Liberia. It is expecting to receive an additional order for 300 wagons valuing around $23 million to be exported. The execution of this order is expected to start from Q3 of the current financial year.
“With these new orders coming in we expect exports to grow. Last year we have done substantial exports from steel foundry division to the US,” he said.