The Department of Heavy Industries will support establishment of a centre of excellence for smart pumps and an advanced centre of excellence in welding engineering in Coimbatore.
The agreements for these were signed here on Monday.
The Centre of Excellence for Smart Pumps will be established at Si’Tarc at a total cost of Rs. 8.41 crore. The government will provide Rs. 6.76 crore as grant. A submsersible smart pump that will challenge the best pump available will be developed within a year, said K.V. Karthik, project coordinator. The share of Indian pump industry is just one per cent now in the global market and this can be increased to six per cent in three to four years with the smart pump, he added.
The advanced centre of excellence for welding engineering will come up at PSG College of Technology.
The department also signed an agreement for a common engineering facility centre to be established in Surat at a total cost of Rs. 50 crore. The 22-month project will focus on the development of technologies for general engineering and textile engineering segments. The government will give Rs. 34 crore as grant.
According to Girish Shankar, secretary of the Department of Heavy Industries, and Vishvajit Sahay, joint secretary of the department, four such centres have come up so far, including the ones for which the agreements were signed on Monday. The long-term plan is to make the centres self-sustainable. These are all focused on the capital goods sector (machine tools, pumps, welding, and general engineering).
Such visits to cities where there are several manufacturing industries are an opportunity to know better the needs of the industries, the secretary said. On demonetisation, he said it was too early to know if there was an impact on industries. He urged the units to adopt the latest technologies to be competitive and to come out with proposals that will focus on technology development.
Mr. Sahay added that the government gives 80 per cent of the cost as grant for these projects.
