Alstom’s Kolkata global centre goes on stream

KOLKATA: Alstom Projects India (APIL), a majority-owned subsidiary of E15-bn Alstom of France, has launched its trendy global engineering centre in Kolkata. The centre will support Alstom’s global environment control systems business which specialises in air quality control systems for power generation and the industrial process market. Nearly 70% of the work at Alstom’s city centre will be linked to the company’s international projects in the US and Europe.

Alstom is a world leader in air quality control systems and enjoys numero uno status in India’s emission control market for the domestic aluminium industry.“Alstom will hire 250 engineers at its Kolkata centre. They will be trained in Europe and US to execute projects in the environment control systems (ECS) business. This will be Alstom’s fifth engineering centre in India,” said Mr Philippe Joubert, president of Paris-based Alstom Power. He declined to divulge the specific investment in the Kolkata facility.

Mr Joubert was in town to launch the global engineering centre. With him were APIL vice-chairman & managing director Frederic Lalanne and APIL chairman & country president Sunand Sharma.

Mr Joubert also announced Alstom’s plans to shore up its boiler and boiler-related equipment production lines at the Durgapur works in West Bengal. Alstom’s range of power-station boilers and associated equipment coming out of the Durgapur unit will address the requirements of thermal power producers in the country and in export markets like Australia and the Middle East. But Alstom is yet to formalise actual investment or upcoming capacity expansion targets at Durgapur.

“The Durgapur factory, which came within the APIL fold after Alstom globally acquired ABB’s power business in 2000, will see comprehensive modernisation and expansion in its present 500-strong headcount. Alstom is yet to fix capacity expansion targets in West Bengal, but we expect to focus on super-critical boiler technology with our partner, Bhel,” said Mr Lallane.

Elaborating, he said “we’ve decided to expand production capacitities at Durgapur at a stage when West Bengal is about to see a huge expansion in thermal generation capacities. Alstom-Durgapur is keen to address this opportunity besides looking at export markets.”

The high-level Alstom team led by Mr Lallane and Mr Joubert will spend a week in Durgapur to check out the company’s existing unit before deciding on the boiler technology and freezing capacity expansion targets. The objective is clearly to embrace super-critical technologies to make boilers that support jumbo sized 800-mw thermal units with higher energy efficiency levels.