Engineering industries form the backbone of modern industrial development. These industries provide machines for industries and equipment for transport, agriculture, mining, etc. The range of their products varies from nuts and bolts to industrial machinery, automobiles, railway engines and coaches, ships, aircrafts, transmission towers, etc.
The heavy engineering industries need a large number of components which they do not produce by themselves. This has encouraged the development of a large number of ancillary industries. In India, the heavy engineering industries have developed mostly after independence in the public sector.
In India, the history of heavy engineering industry begins with the setting up of the Heavy Engineering Corporation Ltd. at Ranchi in 1958. It produces blast furnaces for steel plants, heavy crushing and grinding equipments, cranes, equipments for rolling mills, mines and press forgings and drilling rigs for oil wells.
Image Source: plasticsinfomart.files.wordpress.com
1. Industrial Machinery:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
India manufactures a great variety of machinery for various industries like cotton and jute textiles, sugar, cement, paper, chemicals, tea, coal mining, fertilisers, dairy, etc.
Mumbai is the major producer of textile machinery. It has auxiliary units at Kolkata, Ahmadabad, Coimbatore, Ludhiana, Gwalior, etc. There are about 63 units, which are making jute mill machinery. The main products are cone winders, boiling presses, broad looms, spinning frames, etc. Most of these units are located in the Kolkata-Haora region.
There are about 35 firms making sugar-mill machinery, located mostly in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
There are about 15 firms making cement-mill machinery, located mostly in Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Shahabad and Durgapur.
The factories making machinery for paper mills are located in West Bengal, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Punjab and Orissa. The main centres are Titlagarh, Jamshedpur and Raurkela.
The factories making machinery for chemical and pharmaceutical plants, manufacture sulphuric acid plants, superphosphate plants, water treatment plants, heat exchangers, pressure vessels and a host of other machines.
The agricultural machinery includes a wide range of equipments such as earth-moving machinery, excavators, bull-dozers, power-tillers, threshers, harvesters, tractors, etc. The main producing centres are at Faridabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Vadodara, Hyderabad, Dehagaon and Sonepat.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The coal mining machinery is mostly produced at Durgapur, Kolkata, Jamshedpur, etc.
2. Machine Tools:
It is a core industry and provides mother machines to all sectors of the economy. There are about 200 units manufacturing various types of machine tools and hand tools. The Kirloskar Brothers Ltd is the pioneer company, which started production in 1930s.
The Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT), Bangalore, a public sector unit, is the first large scale modern machine tools factory in India. The other centres of HMT are at Pinjore (Haryana), Kalamassery (Kerala), Hyderabad, Srinagar and Ajmer. These factories produce a large variety of machine tools, such as lathes, radial drilling machines, grinding machines, gear hobbing machines, lamp making machines, etc.
Besides machine tools, HMT also produces watches, tractors and printing machinery. The other public sector units are Heavy Machine Tools at Ranchi, the Praga Tools at Secunderabad, National Instruments Factory at Jadavpur in Kolkata and the Instrumentation Ltd. at Kota and Palaghat, etc.
There are more than 100 private sector units, mostly located at Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Coimbatore, Satara, Ludhiana and Amritsar. Today about two-thirds of our machine tools requirements are met by the Indian manufacturers.
3. Railway Equipment:
India produces enough for its own needs. It is also an important exporter of rails, locomotives, coaches, wagons, signalling equipment, etc., to many Asian and African countries.
There are 3 main units producing locomotives in our country. These are the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW) at Chittaranjan, Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) at Varanasi and the Tata Engineering and Locomotive Works (TELCO) at Jamshedpur. CLW has the capacity to produce about 150 broad-gauge electric locomotives in a year.
There are 3 coach factories in the public sector, at Perambur near Chennai, Bangalore and Kapurthala. These factories together produce about 2500 coaches of all types, needed by the Indian railways. Some private companies like Jessop, TEXMACO and Braithwaite in Kolkata also produce coaches for the Indian railways and for export.
Wagons for the Indian railways are mostly made by the private sector units located in West Bengal, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. There are about 15 units, which can produce about 30,000 wagons in a year.
4. Automobile Industry:
Before independence, assembling of foreign made vehicles was done in India. The real development of the industry began with the setting up of two automobile units: (i) Premier Automobiles Ltd. at Kurla (Mumbai) in 1947, and (ii) Hindustan Motors Ltd. at Uttarpara (Kolkata) in 1948.
Now there are more than 40 units producing various types of automobiles. Most of them are in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Jharkhand, Gujarat and West Bengal.
As steel is the basic raw material for this industry, it tends to be located near iron and steel producing centres. Port cities are preferred due to import and export facilities. The centres producing tyres, tubes, batteries, paints, etc., provide an added advantage. Recently, the trend has been to locate the automobile manufacturing units near the market.
In the last 30 years, India has made a considerable progress in the manufacture of passenger cars, commercial vehicles, motor cycles, scooters, etc. In the early stages, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Jamshedpur and Jabalpur were the main centres producing automobiles. Maruti Udyog Ltd. at Gurgaon (near Delhi) started producing cars in 1983, and at present, it is the largest car manufacturing company in India.
Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company is the leading producer of medium and heavy commercial vehicles in India. Manufacturing of motor vehicles was delicensed in India in the 1990s. This encouraged many world famous companies such as Toyota, Ford, Honda, General Motors, Fiat, Hyundai, Skoda, Mitsubishi, etc., to establish their assembling and manufacturing plants in India. Generally, the foreign companies manufacture motor vehicles in collaboration with the Indian companies.
Apart from the traditional centres like Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Gurgaon, Jabalpur, and Jamshedpur, many new centres have been developed such as Asron (Punjab), Noida (Uttar Pradesh), Pithampur (Madhya Pradesh), Halol (Gujarat), Nasik (Maharashtra), Hoskote, Bangalore (Karnataka) and Hosur, Thiruvallur, Sriperambudur and Maraimalai (Tamil Nadu).
5. Ship-Building Industry:
Ship-building is a large and a complex industry that requires huge capital investments. Harbours with huge space are well-suited for setting up of ship-building factory. India is now in a position to produce most of the materials required for this industry.
The beginning of modern ship-building was made by Scindhia Steam Navigation Company in 1946. The first ship manufactured in India, ‘Jala Usha’, was launched at Vishakhapatnam in March 1948. This company was nationalised in 1952 and is now called the Hindustan Shipyards Ltd.
The Indian shipping tonnage has made great progress since 1947. At present there are five main centres of ship-building industry in India, located at Vishakhapatnam, Kolkata, Kochi, Vasco-da-Gama and Mumbai.
The Hindustan Shipyards has built more than 130 ships of various types including ocean-going ships, passenger ships, cargo-liners, bulk carriers and naval vessels.
The Kochi Shipyard started its production in 1976. It has already built bulk carriers and oil tankers. The Garden Reach factory at Kolkata is located along the east bank of the Hugli River. It specializes in the making of coasters, harbour crafts, inland transport vessels, fishing trawlers and offshore platform for ONGC.
The Mazagaon Docks at Mumbai builds dredgers, dock cranes, cruisers, frigates, etc., for the Indian Navy. Recently, it has started building submarines, missile boats and destroyers for the Indian Navy. The Goa Shipyards at Vasco-da-Gama is making fibre glass boats, trawlers, dredgers and barges.
Most of the repair work is undertaken at Hindustan Shipyard, Kochin Shipyards, Garden Reach and Mazagaon Docks.
6. Aircraft Industry:
At present, the aircraft industry is wholly owned by the Government of India. Hindustan Aircraft Ltd., the first aircraft factory, was set up in Bangalore in 1941. This private factory was merged with Aeronautics India Ltd. in 1964, to form the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., Bangalore, popularly known as the HAL.
Bangalore is very suitable for manufacturing aircrafts. The city is far away from the international boundary of India and is thus safe from the point of view of security. The clear and cloudless skies not only permit outdoor work throughout the year, but also allow for the flying and testing of aircraft for long hours.
The main work of HAL is to design, manufacture, and repair and overhaul various types of aircrafts, helicopters, and related aero-engines. Now the main manufacturing units of HAL are located in six centres, such as Bangalore, Nasik, Koraput, Hyderabad, Kanpur and Lucknow. Different parts of the aircraft are manufactured at different places due to security reasons.
At present aero-engines are manufactured at Koraput, airframes at Nasik and electronic equipment at Hyderabad. Only military aircrafts are manufactured at Bangalore. Transport aircrafts are made at Kanpur. Till now, HAL has delivered more than one thousand aircrafts. Civil aircrafts are not made in India. Huge sums of money are spent on import of civil and military aircrafts by our country.