- McNally Bharat Engineering is a six-decade-old Indian project builder that designs and constructs entire industrial plants on a turnkey basis - from the first engineering drawing to the final handover - for steel, power, port and mining customers. It entered a court-supervised insolvency process in 2022 and, following approval of a Resolution Plan by BTL EPC Limited, is on the verge of completing implementation and will emerge as an unlevered company with a reset balance sheet. The recurring approach that explains everything else is that the company treats design and engineering as its core skill, with construction as a supplement - the opposite of most rivals, who build first and engineer second.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a turnkey EPC workhorse rebuilding its order pipeline, a steady operation-and-maintenance annuity stream, and a design-and-engineering studio that sells the company’s brainpower directly - each feeding the others with cash, references or talent.
1. Turnkey EPC projects: the industrial plant builder
The company takes a single contract to design, procure everything needed and construct an entire industrial facility - a coal handling plant, a steel mill’s raw-material system or a power station’s balance-of-plant - and hands over a working asset.
- Design-led, not construction-led - the company’s in-house engineering teams create the basic and detailed designs for bulk material handling, mineral beneficiation and ash handling systems using proprietary technology, which means it does not need to pay outside consultants for the intellectual core of a project.
- Built for heavy-industry clients - it serves steelmakers (SAIL, Tata, RINL, NMDC), power utilities (NTPC, GSECL), coal miners (Coal India) and port operators, most of whom award work through competitive tenders.
- Can handle projects up to ₹1,500 crore apiece - the company has executed more than 500 projects over six decades and recently completed ₹1,100 crore of coal handling plants, which gives it live references at a time when many competitors in its band have none.
- Revenue recognised as the work progresses - it uses the percentage-of-completion method, booking income in step with costs incurred, which ties its reported performance closely to physical progress on site.
- Currently constrained by its post-insolvency status - the company cannot yet bid for many tenders because it lacks working-capital facilities and some clients bar companies that have been in NCLT proceedings, though the resolution plan is nearing full implementation.
2. Operation and maintenance services: the steady-cash engine
Once a plant is built - often by the company itself - it stays on to run and maintain the equipment under multi-year contracts, turning lumpy project revenue into a predictable annuity stream.
- Multi-year contracts with blue-chip customers - typical O&M terms run for three to five years, and the current portfolio includes coal and ash handling plants for Adani Group, HPCL Mittal Energy and Jindal Stainless, among others.
- A 180-strong dedicated team - the O&M workforce operates as a separate unit and is planned to grow to more than 300 people, giving the company a specialised field force that project competitors often lack.
- Deep ties with one anchor client - the company has a “formidable presence” with the Adani Group in O&M, with contracts at Raipur and Kurmitar, creating a recurring revenue base from a single relationship.
- Five Coal India projects come with built-in O&M - the First Mile Connectivity joint ventures with Mahanadi Coalfields and South Eastern Coalfields each carry a five-year O&M obligation, locking in future service revenue alongside the construction phase.
- The business that carried the company through distress - management describes O&M as the “constant sustainable business” that fuelled the company during its financial bad patches, underscoring its role as a cash-flow stabiliser.
3. Design and engineering services: selling the brain, not the build
The company sells its engineering know-how directly - designing structures, conveyors, washeries and silos for clients who then build the project themselves or award it to another contractor.
- Self-sufficient in core technologies - it owns its own equipment and process designs for bulk material handling, mineral beneficiation and ash handling, so it can deliver design-only assignments without leaning on outside technology providers.
- Early traction in detail engineering - it has received enquiries for detailed structural design of 10,000 metric tonnes using 3D Tekla software and expects to book more than 30,000 metric tonnes of such work, alongside assignments for pipe conveyors, lime conveying, coal washeries and silos.
- Looking beyond India - the company has started exploring design and engineering opportunities in Africa and the Middle East, which would let it earn foreign revenue without deploying construction crews abroad.
- Two reference orders already won - it secured design and engineering contracts from Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) and Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL Bharatpur), proving the standalone service is saleable.
Group structure and partners
The company sits inside the Kolkata-based Shrachi Group and operates through a web of majority-owned joint ventures that bid for large public-sector contracts, with MBECL as the dominant partner supplying the work.
- Joint ventures are the bidding vehicle for Coal India work - entities such as McNally-Trolex and McNally-Trolex-Kilburn hold contracts with SECL and MCL, with MBECL owning 80% to 97% of each JV and the JV placing orders back to MBECL at a 2% discount to the customer contract value.
- Manufacturing capability was lost in an earlier restructuring - the company’s former subsidiary McNally Sayaji Engineering, which owned the Kumardhubi, Asansol and Bangalore factories making ball mills and other lead equipment, was separated in a 2009 scheme of arrangement and later went through its own insolvency, so MBECL now relies on a vendor base built over the past five years.
- Wholly owned subsidiaries provide an international footprint - the company has subsidiaries in Singapore, Zambia and South Africa, though significant business remains within India and no separate geographical segments are reported.