HAL's order book likely to cross Rs. 1 lakh crore

Bengaluru: State-run aerospace behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) on Thursday said its order book is expected to cross Rs one lakh crore mark in the next year. "The order book was about Rs 53,000 crore, if you add Tejas (LCA) to it, it will cross Rs 80,000 crore, so that is the order book as of now, and we are expecting two more orders that is basically for LCH and HTT-40, coming up for the next year," HAL CMD R Madhavan said. Speaking to reporters here at the Aero India 2021, he said: "We will be reaching Rs one lakh crore plus probably by next year end....this year is quite comfortable for us," he added.

Earlier in the day, the Indian Airforce formally issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to the HAL for its HTT-40 turbo trainer, the company said. "We will be making this HTT-40 initially from Bengaluru where it was designed, later it will go to Nasik for series production.. Basically it will start with 70 aircraft, we are looking at a total number of 106," Madhavan said to a question. Madhavan said the company was quite sure about meeting its targets both in terms of financial as well as operational performance. "We had issues with the COVID lockdown in the first two quarters, the first quarter was almost washed out, but by the third quarter we have recovered and even showing a growth over the last year," he said.

Regarding the Rs 48,000-crore order for 73 Tejas Mk-1A variants and 10 LCA Tejas Mk-1 trainer aircraft, Madhavan said as per the contract HAL has to start delivering in 36 months from now. The first aircraft is expected to be delivered by March 2024."The first delivery will be two aircraft or something, which will be ramped up to 16. The total supply time post the first delivery is six years that makes the total project time line of nine years. We will try to reduce it to somewhere around (by) one year." The company has started the process of integrating the vendors into the system now itself so that they are prepared for delivering these aircraft after 36 months. Responding to a question on private sector contribution, Madhavan said, as of today 463 vendors are involved which included MSMES and bigger companies.