KOLKATA - State-owned Heavy Engineering Corp (HEC), which manufactures capital goods, machine tools and components for core sector industries, now wants to make locomotives, a company official said.

The company is also keen to collaborate with overseas companies to manufacture defence equipment.

“Railway is a sector which we are really keen on, and want to manufacture electric locomotives. The demand for electric locomotives is very high in India,” HEC chairman and managing director G.K. Pillai told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar here Friday.

The company would also focus on manufacturing wagon wheels, Pillai said, adding, “India imports wheels. There is a lot of scope to flourish in this business.

In this connection, he would seek a meeting with Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee to discuss the possibility of an equipment supply agreement.

The defence equipment manufacturing business, Pillai said, would also “grow very well in the coming days”.

“We are looking for foreign parties with whom we can tie up. We have already made a small beginning, and are working closely with TISL (Tata Industrial Services Ltd),” he said.

TISL was set up in 2007 to facilitate industrial collaborations between foreign original equipment manufacturers and Indian industry.

Pillai said HEC, which earned a net profit of Rs.16.12 crore last fiscal, has targeted a turnover of Rs.750 crore for the current financial year, with plans to scale it up to Rs.1,200-crore by 2011-12.

The HEC chairman, however, ruled out raising funds from the primary market through divestment in the near term.

“We have just started making profit for the last three years. Let us make such profits for another two years, then we will think about it.”