Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) has issued an Expression of Interest (EoI) inviting global companies to partner and leverage its facilities and capabilities for setting up a manufacturing base in the country.

The scope of work includes manufacturing and technology partnerships with global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who are seeking an opportunity to establish or expand their supply chains or manufacturing base in India. These include the manufacture of various goods, including heavy electrical equipment, process project equipment, and solar value chain.

Some of the possible areas of partnership could be on heavy electrical equipment, project, and transportation equipment, silicon to module solar value chain, and setting up of up to 5 MW capacity of Li-Ion cell manufacturing facility for all types of electric vehicles and energy storage.

BHEL, a central public sector enterprise under the Department of Heavy Industries, has 16 manufacturing facilities spread across the country. It also plans to expand its operations in the solar value chain by taking up polysilicon refining, wafer, and ingot manufacturing.

The company seeks partnerships with global OEMs through a range of cooperation models such as joint ventures, joint manufacturing, technology licensing, contract manufacturing, and know-how transfer arrangement.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a major impact on all the economic activities, including manufacturing. “Supply chain disruptions in many sectors have been witnessed, the results of which will become more pronounced in the future,” said  BHEL in the EoI. The government enterprise further added that the result of these disruptions would become more pronounced in the future.

“For a world that must quickly come to terms with the new normal, it is imperative that manufacturing activities are quickly resumed and ramped up, which would help the restoration of normalcy and avoiding shortages that may adversely affect the international economic recovery. A key lesson for businesses, emerging from the Covid-19 aftermath, is that the decentralizing of manufacturing will have to be adopted as a major strategy to mitigate disruption risks associated with concentrated and localized operations,” the document added.

Last month, Mercom hosted a webinar to find out the trends in the renewable energy market with a primary focus on the Indian solar sector. It included findings from across the supply chain to understand how the solar industry in the country is tackling the global COVID-19 pandemic.

During the program, Anand Kumar, the former secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), said that the MNRE has plans to promote domestic solar manufacturing capacity as a large portion of solar equipment is imported from China and abroad. He also noted that the ministry not only has plans to develop solar components like cells, modules, ingots, and wafers, but it is also looking to venture into manufacturing ancillary equipment like back sheets, inverters, and transformers.

Meanwhile, India’s solar cell manufacturing units are still facing the challenge of manufacturing domestically.

Earlier, Mercom published an in-depth analysis of the ongoing pandemic on the solar industry as it coincides with the busiest time of the year for solar installations.