Simplex Castings Ltd is a 60-year-old Indian heavy-engineering firm that makes the giant metal parts and turnkey plants that steel mills, railways, and defence contractors cannot build themselves - it is, in its own words, “The Cast Master”. Born as a traditional foundry and now run by the second generation of the Shah family, the company has spent decades engineering products that India once had to import, from Russian-designed steel-plant equipment to Japanese-technology coke-oven doors. The recurring approach is simple: take a complex, high-wear industrial component that customers need in small batches, master the metallurgy and machining under one roof, and become the country’s largest or first supplier of that thing - then repeat for the next component. # Business segments One integrated heavy-engineering engine, organised around three product families that share the same foundry, fabrication shops, and machine tools - steel-plant equipment, railway bogies, and industrial castings - each feeding the others’ capacity utilisation. ## 1. Steel-plant equipment: the foundry’s oldest customer **The company makes and maintains the massive iron and steel assemblies inside blast furnaces, coke ovens, and sinter plants - and it has been doing it for the country’s largest steel producer for over five decades.** - **World’s largest in its niche** - Simplex claims to be the world’s largest manufacturer of coke-oven doors, having supplied more than 10,000 batteries across India and over 17,000 to foreign clients, which means it owns a tiny but essential corner of the steelmaking supply chain. - **Turnkey plant builder** - beyond individual parts, the company has executed entire mini blast furnaces and slag-granulation plants on a turnkey basis, including a 350-cubic-metre furnace for Southern Iron & Steel using Chinese technology and a sinter plant for SAIL-Bhilai in consortium with Mitsui, Kawasaki, and Hitachi Zosen. - **Deep ties to SAIL** - the Steel Authority of India is a cornerstone customer, with Simplex completing roughly ₹40 crores of orders for various SAIL plants in FY25 alone, including a ₹25 crore order for 160 sinter-machine pallet assemblies designed to last more than 15 years. - **Preferred by foreign licensors** - the company was selected as a manufacturing partner by TsNIIchermet, Russia’s central iron-and-steel research institute, to build Chermet-designed equipment for Indian and Russian steel plants, and it already exports to markets including Russia, Brazil, Japan, and Egypt. ## 2. Railway bogies: the returning engine **After a forced exit in 2019, the company has re-entered the wagon-bogie market with fresh regulatory approval and new capacity - and it plans to make this half its business within a few years.** - **A restart, not a start-up** - Simplex made wagon bogies for 20-30 years until it sold its railway-dedicated unit in 2019; it has now obtained fresh RDSO (Research Designs and Standards Organisation) approval and begun production again, with initial capital expenditure already deployed. - **Capacity to supply both new wagons and spares** - the new line can produce 200 to 250 bogies per month, enough for 100-125 wagons, and the company intends to sell to wagon manufacturers for new builds and directly to Indian Railways for replacement spares, which together make up the entire addressable market. - **Beyond bogies** - the plan is to add couplers, draft gears, springs, and side-bearers to the railway portfolio, turning a single-product re-entry into a full under-wagon components vertical, subject to further RDSO certification. ## 3. Industrial castings and fabrications: the capacity filler **When the foundry is not making steel-plant equipment or railway bogies, it pours iron and steel into defence castings, oil-and-gas pump units, and heavy fabricated assemblies for a roster of marquee industrial customers.** - **Ballistic-grade and beyond** - the company produces ballistic-grade castings for war-tank turrets and has supplied more than 500 defence products across India, alongside sucker-rod pumping units for ONGC’s oilfields. - **One roof, two shops** - the business runs a ferrous foundry (21,000+ tonnes per year capacity) and a heavy-engineering fabrication shop (15,000+ tonnes per year) with a central machine shop full of CNC tools and an NABL-accredited testing lab, so a single order can be cast, machined, and tested without leaving the premises. - **Order-book visibility** - the quarterly order book stood above ₹100 crores as of Q4 FY26, with recent wins including a ₹23 crore order from SMS India for steel-plant equipment and a ₹13 crore order from ThyssenKrupp for coke-oven doors, giving the shops a pipeline that spans multiple quarters. # Group structure and partners **A standalone company with promoter control, a clean corporate structure, and a newly signed 25-year solar-power deal that cuts energy costs by roughly a third.** - The promoter group holds 52.36% of the shares, and the board comprises three executive directors (including Managing Director Sangeeta Shah) and three independent directors. - The company has no subsidiaries, associates, or joint ventures as of FY25; a previously held Singapore subsidiary and several domestic entities were divested or removed from the structure in earlier years. - A 25-year power-purchase agreement with Natraj Energy will supply the Bhilai and Tedesara plants from a dedicated 5.5 MWp solar installation under a cash-neutral structure, cutting the per-unit power cost from ₹9 to roughly ₹5-6 and saving close to ₹2.16 crores annually.