Hilton Metal Forging is a small Indian company that takes steel and reshapes it under immense heat and pressure into precision components that heavy industry cannot run without - flanges for oil pipelines, wheels for railway wagons, and now empty shells for artillery. Founded in 2005 by a mechanical engineer with deep forging experience, it has spent two decades moving from a stainless-steel specialist into a vertically integrated manufacturer that designs, forges, machines and heat-treats everything under one roof at its single 5-acre plant in Wada, Maharashtra. The recurring approach is to spot a product India still imports - railway wheels, wagon axles, artillery shells - and build the in-house capability to make it domestically, then get it certified by the government agency that controls procurement, turning a regulatory approval into a competitive moat. # Business segments Three engines at different stages - a legacy forging business that keeps the lights on, a railway division that has just crossed from testing into production, and a defence contract that could change the company's scale entirely - each built on the same plant, the same presses, and the same quality discipline. ## 1. Industrial forgings: the cash-generating core **A job-shop that makes safety-critical metal parts for oil refineries, petrochemical plants and heavy machinery, earning revenue through blanket purchase orders from a concentrated set of industrial customers.** - **Paid by the part, not by contract** - the company operates on blanket purchase orders where customers set a per-unit price upfront and later release quantities and delivery schedules, so there is revenue visibility without formal long-term supply agreements. - **Everything under one roof** - it handles process design, closed-die forging, machining and heat treatment in-house, which means it can offer finished components rather than rough forgings and capture more value per piece. - **Cash tied up in inventory by design** - flange manufacturing is a long, approval-heavy process, especially for export orders, so the company must hold many sizes and grades of steel; its inventory period runs to 217 days and its full operating cycle to 234 days, making this a working-capital-intensive business. - **Raw material is a local purchase, paid in cash** - all its steel - carbon, alloy, stainless, plus smaller volumes of aluminium, magnesium and titanium - is sourced domestically and paid for upfront, which means supplier relationships and negotiating skill directly determine input costs. - **Exports provide a natural currency hedge** - it sells to Europe, Southeast Asia and America, billing predominantly in US dollars, so foreign-currency receivables largely offset any foreign-currency payables. ## 2. Railway wheels and wheelsets: the certified challenger **A domestic import-replacement play where the company has become the first private MSME to win RITES approval for forged wheels and complete wheelset assemblies, giving it a seat at the Indian Railways procurement table.** - **Certification is the barrier to entry** - the company's forged wagon wheels passed fracture and compatibility tests by RITES (the railways' inspection agency), then survived 3-6 months of on-field trials; it has since supplied 2,500 wheels, which makes it eligible to bid on global tenders. - **Now selling the whole wheelset, not just the wheel** - in June 2025 it manufactured a complete forged wheelset (two wheels plus one axle) that RITES inspected and approved, and it plans to produce more than 3,000 wheelsets in FY26, scaling toward a capacity of 20,000 per year. - **A built-in replacement cycle** - every railway wagon must undergo periodic overhauling once every 4.5 years, which creates annual demand for roughly 1,60,000 replacement wagon wheels, a market that today depends heavily on imports. - **Vande Bharat approval opens the passenger-train market** - in June 2025, RITES approved the company's feasibility for Vande Bharat and LHB coach forged wheels, making it the first private MSME with that recognition and adding a higher-speed, higher-profile product to its catalogue. - **Limited competition, better pricing power** - the railways division faces relatively few rivals compared with the crowded industrial forgings segment, which helps offset thinner margins elsewhere in the product mix. ## 3. Defence artillery shells: the scale-up bet **A newly signed order to supply empty 155mm artillery shells under a non-exclusive agreement, turning the company's forging precision into a defence manufacturing credential.** - **One big order, rolling advances** - in March 2026 the company signed an interim sales agreement to deliver 360,000 empty 155mm M107 bomb shells over 24 months at 15,000 units per month, with the buyer providing a rolling advance equal to 50% of three months' supply and paying each invoice before dispatch. - **Non-exclusive by design** - the agreement does not tie the company to a single customer, so it can pursue additional buyers for the same product if demand materialises. - **Quality systems built for this moment** - the company's operational targets include reducing rejected work to fewer than 25 parts per million and achieving ±8 sigma process control, the kind of defect standard that artillery-shell production demands. # Group structure and partners **A standalone, promoter-led company with no subsidiaries or joint ventures, operating a single plant and relying on three Indian banks for working capital.** - **No corporate layers** - the company has no subsidiaries, joint ventures or associate companies, so everything it does flows through one listed entity on the BSE and NSE. - **A single manufacturing site** - all production happens at one plant in Wada, Palghar district, Maharashtra, on a 5-acre plot. - **Promoter-led with a long-tenured founder** - Chairman and Managing Director Yuvraj Malhotra, who holds roughly 58.4 lakh shares, has about 35 years in the forging industry and runs the company alongside a six-member board that includes three independent directors. - **Three-bank lending group** - its borrowings come from State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and South Indian Bank, with average working-capital utilisation running at 96%.