The Tata Steel Growth Shop (TGS), a division of Tata Steel, was set up in 1968, thanks to the efforts of J.R.D. Tata and Sumant Mulgaonkar of Telco (now Tata Motors) fame. Spread over more than 350 acres (141.6 hectares) at Gamharia in Saraikela district of Jharkhand, the TGS was first conceived as a unit supplying equipment for the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) plant in Jamshedpur; and it was called TISCO Maintenance Shop when production started in 1971. Today, as TGS, it stands as one of the most important units in the Adityapur industrial area.
Its forte is its multidisciplinary engineering for the design, manufacture and supply of high-precision equipment for industrial sectors including steel, aluminium, energy and power, railways, cement, aviation and space research. The products include steel plant equipment such as blast furnace, torpedo-ladle cars, caster equipment, transfer cars, ladles, rolling mills equipment, steel-melting shop equipment, and sponge iron plant equipment, electric overhead travelling cranes up to a capacity of 200 tonne capacity, pot-tending machines for aluminium industry, diesel locomotive parts like 16-cylinder and six-cylinder engine blocks, crank case, under-frame kit, floor frame assembly, hydro and power plant equipment. It is one of the largest manufacturers of sponge iron plant equipment, and is among the few suppliers of diesel locomotive components in India. It is the sole supplier of components such as cover and frame, 16-cylinder engine block, engine coupling and machine crank case for the Railways.
In the oil and natural gas sector, the TGS has specialised in the manufacture of crude columns for refineries such as the Tatipaka Refinery of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd, and large pressure vessels for the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd in Gujarat.
The TGS is the first Indian company to successfully manufacture and supply the mobile launching pad weighing about 750 tonnes for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has enabled ISRO to launch satellites with payloads ranging from 1,600 to 2,500 kg. The nerve-centre of the TGS is the design cell, which is equipped with fully computerised state-of-the-art computer-aided design.
Though the quality of TGS's products was never doubted, it was only after 2004 that the company became profit-earning. In 2002, the company's turnover was a meagre Rs.72 crore. By 2004, it made a jump to Rs.287 crore; in the last fiscal, the turnover stood at Rs.306 crore. Bimlendra Jha, who took over in 2004 as executive in charge, says the projected turnover for the next fiscal is Rs.500 crore. "Our vision is a Rs.1,000 crore turnover by 2009, and eventually we too can become another Larsen and Toubro," Jha told Frontline.
Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
