RAILWAY WORLD       Vol.27, No.4 April - June 2001
 

NU METALOCRAFT PV. LTD

Major supplier of R. E. items

Kolkata-based Nu Metalocraft Pvt. Ltd. (Estd. 1984) is an established manufacturer of non-ferrous items for railway electrification, accounting for a supply of around 60-70% of the NF items for R.E.

According to Mr. K. B. Sen, Managing Director of the firm; "We supply non-ferrous items for railway electrification, to the satisfaction of the Central Organisation for Railway Electrification and Indian Railways. We are now at zero defect stage. Our materials are generally inspected by the Rites, Calcutta, and we are approved for non-ferrous RE fittings by Core, Allahabad. We are suppliers to all the zonal railways which have electrified sections. We have supplied 70% of the requirements for the last 7-8 years for the whole of Indian Railways. We have all the in-house testing facilities and have all the gauges as well as electrical and mechanical gadgets. We have the tensile testing. 

We have invested about Rs.1 cr. in our infrastructure and testing facilities. All the items we manufacture are difficult items and the most complicated items are different brackets like large Catenary Suspension Bracket and Large Catenary Direct Clamp. The quality of the items is most important as these have to withstand impact load at a very high speed."

Mr. Sen, who is B.E.(Mech.) and who worked in Jessop & Co. Ltd. and later in Zambian Institute of Technology for 81/2 years, observed: "We can play our role in supplying RE fittings after subjecting them to rigorous tests by following the dimensions in toto. Lowering the weight of non-ferrous fittings will cause problems and we have never done this in the past. As a result, there is no complaint against our firm against failure of any of our fittings. This quality is naturally linked with price. We have reduced the cost already by 20-25% during the last 4-5 years. our rate of return must at least be 15% and we are not getting this. As a reputed manufacturer, we can forego some of our profits, if the turnover is more".

"Electrification has been done only on 22% of Indian Railways and this is very low for a large country like India," he pointed out. "We (Railways) are having funds problems. IR's idea of doing more electrification has not materialised. Punctual running of trains is not possible, unless we have more of electrification. Previously for 1 km of RE, they used to spend Rs.90 lakh. It has now come down to Rs.65 lakh which is very low, thanks to the efforts of IR."

Mr. Sen expressed the hope that the momentum of energising track will pick up soon.