Tata Projects sees green hydrogen, green ammonia, pump storage hydro as pillars of growth

Vinayak Pai. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

Having built industrial units, hotels, hospitals, airports, dedicated freight corridors, metro rail lines, stations, data centres and power transmission lines, Tata Projects Limited, a leading EPC contractor majority owned by Tata Sons, is looking to build green hydrogen and green ammonia units as part of it’s future expansion strategy. 

“Sustainability is a critical element for us and we see in this sustainability journey, a lot of opportunities will open up in new sectors,” said Vinayak Pai, MD & CEO, Tata Projects in an interview. 

“Green hydrogen, green ammonia is one thing which I believe will accelerate over the next few years. Since India is very well placed because of the high percentage of renewable energy generation, mainly solar energy generation, that power can be used to generate either hydrogen or ammonia, which can then be stored and transported,” he said.

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Mr. Pai said the “other is the new concept of pump storage hydro where you build basically to pump water in the daytime when you have renewable energy, and then you generate electricity in the night.”

“All these are ways of harnessing the renewable energy and because of our experience of hydrocarbons through our oil, gas and hydrocarbon business, we have a good experience of hydrogen which is a very difficult element to handle,” he added.

The company is also seeing opportunities in sustainable aviation fuel, biofuels for which it can build biomass reactors for its customers.

Besides this, since India is moving to be a manufacturing hub including for EVs, Tata Projects is looking at opportunities in building battery manufacturing units and facilities that will be recycling the batteries.

Apart from tapping into growth opportunities, the company is building capabilities to execute and deliver projects with more predictably both in terms of cost and time frame.

“Our focus is intensely on how we can be the best at delivering projects and that’s why we put more emphasis on predictable project delivery,” Mr. Pai said

“Predictably, in terms of time, cost, safety, quality. is not great today. Thats not only in India, it’s there globally. So there is a lot of opportunity to plan better and to do projects more predictably,” he said. “If we do that, we will be sought after globally,” he added.

Having turned into profits last year [₹139 crore on revenues of ₹17,247 crore in FY24] after two years of losses [due to the impact of COVID on projects] Tata Projects is now looking at double digit growth in FY26.

“Double digit growth for sure. I would say it will start as a low double digit and more rapidly move to high double digit, both in terms of top line and bottom line,” Mr. Pai said.