Thermax hopes to ride on steel, power and refining this year
Thermax is expecting big projects to be back in the steel, refining and petrochemicals and power sectors. Managing director and chief executive Ashish Bhandari told ET's Kalpana Pathak in an interview that he is optimistic about the power sector with the government talking about large power plants. Edited excerpts:
What is Thermax's capex plan for this fiscal? How do you see the order book?
We don't disclose capex numbers. Regarding the order book, I expect this year to be one of the most exciting. Energy transition, industrial growth across multiple sectors and urbanisation — all three of these levers are, in my view, tailwinds for business. All of last year, we didn't have any big project announcements, but as I look at this year, I expect big projects to be back in play, be it in steel, refining and petrochemicals, or power. I'm quite optimistic about power, with the government talking about large power plants again, and they are moving at a very fast pace. That is a portion of the market which I wasn't expecting to evolve, and certainly not at this pace… Also, in our standard products where we do a small range of boilers, steam equipment, water, clean air solutions, industrial cooling solutions, we continue to see good growth. We also expect exports to be better. Our exports haven't done well for a couple of years as our India business grew a lot faster than exports.
Why were exports slow?
India grew a lot faster than everywhere else in the world. So exports, which at one point were 35% of Thermax's business,
