L&T Construction bags orders worth Rs. 1,038 cr.

The power transmission and distribution business of L&T Construction has bagged orders worth Rs. 1,038 crore from domestic and foreign market during November. In a statement to the BSE, it said that its fully owned subsidiary in Saudi Arabia has bagged a $108.2-million order from National Grid, a subsidiary of Saudi Electricity company. This is for the construction of five 132 kV substations. The project is in the central province of Saudi Arabia and is scheduled to be completed in 24 months. In the domestic market, the company has bagged an order from Odisha Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. It is for the engineering, supply, erection and commissioning of several kilometre of underground EHV and HV networks, compact substations and other distribution elements in Bhubaneshwar. This forms part of the power system improvement project in the State.

Punj Lloyd wins orders worth Rs. 483 cr.

Diversified engineering, procurement and construction company Punj Lloyd has won two rural electrification contracts worth ₹ 483 crore from NTPC Ltd. for two districts in Odisha under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. The company said in a statement recently that the scope of work for these two projects includes supply and erection of rural electrification work, construction and augmentation of substation, installation of distribution transformers and connections to below poverty line consumers in the districts. "These projects come shortly after the company announced its debut in T&D with two orders for rural electrification by Power Grid Corporation of India Limited," said C K Thakur, President & CEO � Power, Punj Lloyd. "With this Punj Lloyd will be executing four T&D orders with a cumulative value of approximately ₹ 1,000 crore," he added. The group�s order backlog stands at ₹ 20,283 crore. The order backlog is the value of unexecuted orders on September 30, 2015 plus new orders received after that date.

NBCC bags Rs. 5,828 crore AIIMS project.

State-run NBCC has bagged a Rs. 5,828-crore redevelopment project from AIIMS which involves construction of 3,000 flats. "AIIMS issued a letter of award on November 23 to NBCC for the redevelopment of AIIMS western campus and Ayurvigyan Nagar, involving construction of 3,000 flats in 2.5 years with the financial implication of Rs. 5,828 crore," NBCC said in a regulatory filing. To make the project commercially viable, NBCC will sell 10% of the area. NBCC would be charging 10% of the final project cost as project management consultancy fee and 1% for marketing expenses. The MoU between AIIMS and NBCC will be signed after the Union cabinet's approval.

IOC Gujarat refinery to set up 1,400 kW solar power unit.

As a measure to reduce its carbon footprint and increase in utilisation of renewable energy, Gujarat Refinery of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC) has laid out a plan to set up 1,400 kW of solar power systems that will be commissioned in the year 2016. A grid-connected 250- kW solar power system is already catering to the partial electricity requirement of technical building including daytime lighting and air conditioning, informed the company. "The system automatically gets synchronized with Gujarat Refinery�s Power System at LV level during day time and similarly gets offline during evening period. Grid-connected systems are the most common type of solar grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system," said S K Dhar Gupta, Executive Director, Gujarat Refinery. Dhar Gupta also mentioned that in a first for the Indian Oil refineries in India, the Gujarat Refinery has set up a Visual Model-based Safety Park to train its workforce. Inaugurated recently, the park constantly reminds and highlights the importance of safety measures to the workforce. "The refinery has a large number of contractual workers working for various tasks at the refinery. They require regular training on safety and precaution measures before conducting a job at the refinery. Lock Out Tag Out system and electrical safety systems, confined space entry safety system, hot job safety system, Chemical Safety procedures and SOPs have been put up in the safety park which shall be a complete safety guide for visitors, contract workers and employees of the refinery," said Dhar Gupta. For the first time, the company has used SEED (Safety in Each and Every Deed) project for safety culture improvement at Gujarat Refinery. "The genesis of the safety park lies in the fact that 80 per cent learning is done by observing and seeing the situation personally. In order to provide safety training that all workers can understand, we have tapped the visual model based approach to make an impact on the mind of the viewer," said Dhar Gupta. The company is implementing a Reverse Osmosis (RO) Plant within its 13.7 mtpa refinery complex with an investment of Rs. 160 crore. The mechanical completion of the RO plant is expected by March 2016. The RO plant will maximise reuse of treated effluent by improving its quality and thus reduce fresh water consumption considerably.

Essar's Italian venture bags $1.5-b order.

Essar Projects recently said its joint venture with Italy�s Saipem S.p.A won a $1.57 billion order from Kuwait National Petroleum Company for setting up a part of the Al-Zour Refinery Project. This is Essar�s biggest third-party order won in the region. The project at Al Zour is Kuwait's biggest development project with a crude processing capacity of 615,000 barrels per day (bpd). The Kuwaiti company has so far awarded four contracts for the refinery�s construction, worth over $13.2 billion to different International bidders. The project is expected to be completed by 2019. Essar Projects' Managing Director & CEO Shiba Panda said, "The project marks Essar's entry into the Kuwait project market with the biggest EPC contract by an external client." With this order, Essar Project�s order book has reached $2.8 billion, with projects being executed in nine countries

PGCIL emerges lowest bidder for Rs. 6,300-crore Vemagiri II proj.

State-run Power Grid Corporation Ltd. (PGCIL) has emerged as the lowest bidder for Vemagiri II power transmission project of around Rs 6,300 crore in a tariff based auction. "PGCIL has emerged as the lowest bidder for Vemagiri II power transmission project of around Rs. 6,300 crore. The financial bids were opened recently," source said. The source added that Kalpataru Power Transmission has emerged as the lowest bidder for Alipurduar power transmission project for which financial bids were also opened. For Vemagiri II project, PGCIL has bid very aggressively and quoted Rs. 359 crore annual tariff per annum followed by Sterlite Grid (Rs 429.05 crore), Essel (Rs. 459 crore) and Adani (Rs 585 crore). Similarly for Alipurduar project, Kalpataru Power Transmission quoted the lowest tariff of Rs. 129.4 crore per annum followed by Essel (Rs. 129.6 crore), PGCIL (Rs. 138 crore), Sterlite Grid (Rs. 161 crore) and Adani (Rs. 198 crore). REC Transmission Projects (RECTPL) has conducted the auction of the two projects. Wholly-owned subsidiary of state-run Rural Electrification Corporation, RECTPL had earlier postponed the opening of financial bids for the two projects on October 16. The Vemagiri II project will strengthen the transmission system beyond Vemagiri and will be called Vemagiri II Transmission Ltd. It will traverse through Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Similarly, the Alipurduar project will strengthen transmission system in India for transfer of power from new hydroelectric projects in Bhutan. It will traverse through Bihar and West Bengal. The government has planned to put transmission projects worth Rs. 1 lakh crore on the block for auction during the current fiscal.

AAI plans futuristic plan for airport terminal building.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is thinking of a modified plan for the expansion of the new integrated terminal building of the Tiruchi international airport. The new terminal building expansion plan would be "futuristic" in the wake of the current upswing in overall passenger traffic especially international travellers at the airport. The proposed modified plan would take into account passenger traffic in the next 10 years at the Tiruchi airport and formulated accordingly keeping the current growth trend as the base. The proposed move to devise a modified plan emerged following the visit of AAI Chairman R.K. Srivastava to the Tiruchi international airport in mid-August. The AAI Chairman inspected the new integrated terminal building and ascertained the infrastructure facilities and passenger data. He was given a briefing on the existing plan drawn out for the expansion of the terminal building. Under the existing plan, the arrival and departure sides of the new terminal building was to be expanded by 100 metres and 80 metres respectively to double the passenger accommodation capacity by 800 with the estimated cost pegged at Rs. 200 crore. Consequent to the visit of the AAI chairman, the organisation was now thinking of coming out with a modified futuristic plan taking into account passenger traffic in the next 10 years. The Tiruchi international airport from where five foreign carriers operate flights to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Colombo every day has exceeded the one million mark with respect to passenger traffic. As the one million mark has been achieved, the AAI has now planned to work out a modified plan keeping in mind the current upswing in passenger traffic and the projected traffic in 2025-26, airport sources told The Hindu . The AAI corporate headquarters would work out the revised plan, a senior official said and added that the finer aspects of the new scheme was expected to be rolled out in due course. Airport sources were of the firm view that expansion of the new integrated terminal building would take at least three or four years from now. The steady increase in the number of overseas flight services over the years and the rise in passengers� movements necessitated the AAI to expand the new terminal building to augment space to cope with the traffic upswing. The airport is witness to bunching of overseas flights to different foreign destinations in the morning and night with hectic passengers� movements during that time daily. The Tiruchi airport handled over 11 lakh passengers � a majority of whom were overseas travellers during the 2014-15 financial year. The AAI expects the passenger traffic to touch 12 lakh this fiscal given the robust growth at present.

BASF to invest Euro 6 bn in German chemical manufacturing site.

BASF SE has announced its plans to spend a total of at least Euro 6 billion on investments, upgrading and maintenance measures between 2016 and 2020 at the chemical manufacturing site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. On October 21, 2015, company and employee representatives at BASF SE in Ludwigshafen signed a new site agreement, titled �Meeting the challenges of constant change together�, which applies to the approximately 36,000 employees of BASF SE at the site. It will run for five years (from January 1, 2016 until December 31, 2020) and follows on from the existing site agreement, which expires at the end of 2015. The company will continue to forgo forced redundancies for the duration of the agreement. �Economic and social changes are occurring ever faster and are becoming less and less predictable. With the new site agreement, we are creating a framework that offers both flexibility and reliability and will enable the Ludwigshafen site to remain competitive � now and in the future. We rely on our team of dedicated and skilled employees and we will continue to substantially invest in the largest, integrated Verbund site of BASF Group in the coming years,� said Margret Suckale, member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE. Robert Oswald, head of the Works Council of BASF SE, commented, �Job security is highly valued and a decisive factor in motivating employees to actively support the constant change. With the new site agreement, we have been able to extend job security for employees. The company�s stated intent to continue vocational training on a comparable level as in the past and to foster the employability of its staff will also contribute to making the site fit for the future.� Forward-looking investments and active portfolio management are fundamental to the competitiveness of BASF SE. Flexible forms of employment, especially in areas where capacity utilization and order levels can fluctuate considerably, will be maintained and further developed. �The changes in the coming years will be very demanding for employees and managers, so they need to be flexible and prepared to take on new challenges. Job security and entrepreneurial flexibility go hand in hand,� said Dr Wolfgang Hapke, president, human resources at BASF.

Tata Steel to source water from Nilachal Ispat for Kalinganagar plant.

Tata Steel, the country's largest primary steel producer, has entered into a water-sharing agreement with Nilachal Ispat Nigam for its 3 million tonne Kalinganagar plant. Tata Steel is yet to secure land acquisition approvals for inter-connectivity for its own water supply to the plant scheduled to be commissioned by December. "Tata Steel will receive water from Nilachal Ispat from November 1 for a period of one year," an executive at Nilachal Ispat told Business Standard. "The government of Odisha has issued us permission to supply up to 17.5 cubic meter per second (42,000 cu meter per day) of water and we will try to supply the entire quantity to the Tata plant," he added. Nilachal Ispat refrained from divulging the financial details of the deal and said any water supply beyond a year would need board approval. Tata Steel is also sourcing water from Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) for its Kalinganagar plant. "We are supplying 1,100 cubic meter per hour to Tata Steel since March and this contract is for one year. We will provide an extension if the company seeks it," said an official in the water division of IDCO. For every tonne of steel needs about 4 cubic meters of water, which means 12 million cubic meters of water for a 3 million tonne steel plant, according to industry sources. Tata Steel did not respond to a query about its water shortfall at the Kalinganagar facility and its plans to fix it. Delays in approvals for inter-connectivity of water supply was the reason Tata Steel had to enter these agreements, said Nilachal Ispat executives and IDCO officials.

'Adani might proceed with Carmichael project'.

Adani Enterprises is expected to proceed with building its A$7.2-billion ($5.2 billion) Carmichael coal mine and rail project in Queensland state, Australia resources and energy minister Josh Frydenberg said. The project, approved by Australia's regulators October 15, is financially viable due to global energy demand and is unlikely to receive government subsidies, Frydenberg said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp interview recently. The Indian company controlled by billionaire Gautam Adani will have to contend with opposition from environmental groups and the lowest thermal coal prices in more than eight years. "The Carmichael project is of great importance to Queensland and Australia," Frydenberg said. "We've seen a downturn in the price for coal but this project has more than a 40-year lifespan and there's a clear increase in demand for coal and indeed energy across the world." Global energy demand is expected to increase by a third by 2040, he said. Adani plans to build a 388-kilometer (241-mile) rail line to link the mine to the Abbot Point port on the Queensland coast, according to its website. The project is subject to 36 strict conditions, environment minister Greg Hunt said in an e- mailed statement October 15.