Abha Power and Steel is a precision jobbing foundry - it makes single-piece iron and steel castings to order, not off-the-shelf products, for heavy industries where a failed part can halt a railway line or a cement kiln. The company began in 2004 as a commodity ingot plant in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, but transformed itself in two deliberate steps: first, a 2009 brownfield expansion into an SG Iron Foundry dedicated to Indian Railways, and then a 2012-2016 conversion of the original ingot unit into a multi-disciplinary Steel Foundry, completing the shift from commodity producer to specialised casting manufacturer. The recurring approach is to own the entire manufacturing chain under one roof - from in-house testing and pattern-making to machining and heat treatment - so that it can cast anything from a 500-gram clamp to a 10,000-kg crusher ring, all backed by captive solar power that cuts energy costs and carbon emissions.
Business segments
A single integrated foundry business, powered by captive solar generation - one manufacturing floor with two metallurgical capabilities, serving seven heavy industries through a jobbing model where every casting is made to a customer's specification.
1. Iron and steel castings: a jobbing foundry built on railway approvals
The company earns revenue by winning orders for custom castings - mostly from Indian Railways and its suppliers - and manufacturing them in two in-house foundries that can handle over a thousand different part designs.
- Two foundries, one roof - an SG Iron Foundry makes railway inserts, jaw adapters, clamps and centering discs, while a Steel Foundry produces heavy-wear components like hammers, crushing rings, grate plates, coke bucket liners and clinker grinder rolls, together covering more than 1,000 SKUs across over 20 product ranges.
- Railways is the anchor customer - most revenue comes from Indian Railways, either directly through zonal contracts (South East Central Railway, North Central Railway) or indirectly through aggregators, sleeper plants and private OEMs that supply the railways, with the Insert segment alone historically commanding roughly half of revenue.
- Approvals are the moat - the company is an RDSO-approved Class "A" Foundry and an approved vendor to ICF (Integral Coach Factory) and NMDC, certifications that are prerequisites for supplying safety-critical railway components like bogies, couplers and the newly launched Part of Coupler Assembly.
- Beyond railways, six more industries - the same foundries serve cement, steel, power, infrastructure, mining and defence customers including Tata Steel, BHEL, SAIL, UltraTech Cement and JSW Steel, with a recent strategic order from the Ministry of Defence for two prototype casting parts marking entry into the defence sector.
- Exports to seven countries - castings are shipped to the UAE, Qatar, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Nepal, diversifying the customer base beyond domestic railways.
2. The manufacturing engine: how 14,400 tonnes of capacity turns into precision parts
Every casting moves from raw material inspection through electric-arc melting, moulding, heat treatment and non-destructive testing inside a single 7.32-acre plant - and a multi-stage automation upgrade is now replacing manual bottlenecks.
- 14,400 MT of installed capacity - split equally between the SG Iron Plant (7,200 MT) and the Steel Plant (7,200 MT), with about 45% utilisation (6,450 MT) during FY25, leaving significant headroom for growth.
- Electric furnaces, not coal - the plant uses energy-efficient electric arc furnaces instead of coal or coke-based furnaces, cutting the carbon footprint, while fume extraction units, bag filters, wet scrubbers and a zero-liquid-discharge system handle emissions and water.
- In-house testing removes the quality bottleneck - a NABL-accredited laboratory (ISO/IEC 17025:2017) performs ultrasonic, magnetic particle, dye penetrant and hammer testing on every casting, so defects are caught before the part leaves the factory floor.
- Automation is replacing manual moulding - historically, sand and additives were fed batch-by-batch by hand, creating delays that left furnace capacity idle; a new automated sand processing system will lift throughput from 1,000 kg/hour to 35,000 kg/hour, while a pneumatic reclamation system will reuse 75-80% of sand.
- New furnaces, bigger heat treatment - a PLC-based Electric Arc Furnace was commissioned by October 2025 for complex steel grades, and a 20MT Heat Treatment Furnace plus an automated Moulding Line are targeted for completion by August 2026, funded by nearly ₹16.39 crore of IPO proceeds.
Captive solar power
A 3 MW captive solar plant supplies over a third of the factory's electricity, insulating the foundry from grid-price swings and cutting about 3,400 tonnes of carbon emissions each year.
- 30-35% of energy from the sun - the solar plant meets roughly one-third of total power needs, reducing dependence on grid electricity and providing a cost buffer against volatile energy prices.
- Backward integration into energy - by generating its own power, the company effectively controls a key input cost for its electric furnaces, which is central to its stated ambition of becoming a green manufacturer of castings.
Group structure and partners
Abha Power and Steel is a standalone public company with no subsidiaries or joint ventures, listed on the NSE Emerge platform since December 2024 and backed by a leadership team with decades of alloy and steel manufacturing experience.
- Single entity, single segment - the company operates as one legal entity (CIN L27102CT2004PLC016654) with no subsidiaries, joint ventures or associates, and reports a single business segment.
- Banking relationships - the company's bankers are SIDBI and ICICI Bank, providing the working-capital and project-finance backbone for a capital-intensive foundry business.