At the recent press meet in Delhi after the board meeting to announce quarterly and annual report for 2024-25, EIL’s chairperson Vartika Shukla and her team were found to be repeatedly emphasising on a particular term – highest. There were a couple of metrics where this adjective was used for – parameters that subtly underline the recent improvement in performance, while also in some way promising a stronger performance in the future.
For the 60-year-old public sector unit, which is known for its expertise in engineering consultancy and undertaking turnkey projects, 2024-25 seems to have signed off with more promises to expand both its core business (oil & gas), as well as what in a conventional sense would classify as new verticals it has been harnessing for quite some time. Some of the other key assets the company boasts of today include an expanding international presence for which it has been bonding with some of the best in the world. Along with this, the desire to align more with critical infrastructure pieces or projects, as well as promising alternative energy domains, is increasingly becoming more expressive, if you closely examine EIL’s projects portfolio today. The company has just ended the previous fiscal with a commendable order book, which certainly subtly indicates its future direction, including the efforts to expand its portfolio – both vertically and horizontally.
The ‘highest’ factor
EIL engineering consultancy excellence presents an interesting mix. While it is involved in one of the largest refinery projects in Nigeria, interestingly, it is also undertaking projects in popular domestic religious sites like Ayodhya and is creating Yatri Nivas, along with ONGC, on the way to Amarnath Yatra this year. “Our people are available at 60 project sites – domestic and international,” affirms Rupesh Kumar Singh, head, HR, EIL. The company’s expansive reach is a major plus for it and would be one of the key catalysts for its future growth. This is what the statistical equation indicates at the end of 2024-25.
But before reading between the lines of its recent performance, here is a quick look at the basic strength of the firm. The firm is today positioned as a global engineering consultancy project management specialist, which is particularly aligned with the oil & gas value chain. A Navaratna, which functions under the aegis of the ministry for petroleum & natural gas, the company is credited in some of the landmark projects in the domain. A research report underlines that its involvement is well visible in 20 out of 23 large-scale refineries, which have been created in the country. Its collaborative in-house R&D capabilities have fetched 40 process technologies and is a major strength in applying quality technology solutions in its projects.
Gradually, the company has also grown its international profile, with the Middle East as the hub for global operations. The company has been diversifying over the decades into infrastructure projects like strategic crude oil storage, fertiliser plants, ports, LNG, water & waste water management and coal gasification. It is now also showing strong intent to align with sunrise sectors – biofuels, green hydrogen, ethanol, defence, etc. An investor presentation of the company underlines that, within the oil & gas domain, it has quite a commendable track record comprising 91 major refinery projects (10 of them greenfield), 45 onshore oil & gas processing projects, 51 pipeline projects, 12 major petrochemical projects and 15 classification assignments.
When it comes to service offerings, the company provides a complete value chain, ranging from pre-project services to project implementation and EPC contracts. Over the decades, the company has also developed an interest in infrastructure projects and numerically has been involved with nearly 40 large-to-middle-scale projects.
In 2024-25, the government-run company secured an order inflow of Rs8,214 crore, which is an all-time high in EIL’s journey so far. If you add the carry-over component of its running order book, the figure climbs to about Rs11,700 crore – again, the highest cumulative order book at the end of a fiscal. Another promising ‘highest’ dimension comes from the contribution in inflow from international businesses, which has touched Rs1,077 crore – the highest in the last decade. Somewhere, this seems to be more satisfying, with EIL showing intent to spread wings internationally.
The company incidentally has also posted its highest profits in its journey in 2024-25, even as its revenue remained flattened. “It’s primarily because of some deferred payments,” informs Sanjay Jindal, director, finance. The escalation in profits has resulted mostly from the execution of consultancy projects, where margins are higher. A close examination of its 2024-25 segment-wise numbers clearly demonstrate that its consultancy earnings have significantly grown, while the accruals from the turnkey projects have been on the lower side. And, with the high margin consultancy projects being the driving element of this business in the last year, the company has seen better profitability. The year 2024-25 has proven to be a landmark in EIL’s journey so far, with the organisation’s standalone profit after tax (PAT) reaching Rs465 crore, the highest in the last decade.
Design and diversification
Expanding the international footprint has been a gradual but key element of EIL top brass future strategy for quite some time and this intent now seems to be becoming much stronger. The contribution from international business to its overall kitty has been on an upward trajectory and the chairperson Shukla is confident its share would rise sharply in the near to medium run. “Currently, our international business contributes 12.5 per cent of our business,” she informs. “We are targeting it to touch 20 per cent of our overall business. This may happen over the next two fiscals”.
EIL’s confidence to consistently improve its international business is rooted in its involvement with some prestigious projects. It had won one of its largest overseas consultancy projects of the Dangote Oil Refinery in Nigeria in 2014 and it has now been commissioned. It’s a mega-scale global refinery project and EIL’s project management consultancy, as also engineering procurement & construction management services have been used in implementing a grass-root large-scale refinery and poly-propylene plant, which is located at Lekki Free Trade Zone near Lagos. EIL has also been in the news for providing project management consultancy for the Mongol refinery project, which is funded by a line of credit from the government. The I.5 million tpa grassroots refinery is being set up at Sainshand, which is known for its harsh climatic conditions. The prestigious project is three years away from actual commissioning.
EIL’s overseas profile, however, has more brownie points. It is collaborating with some of the biggest global names, especially with the Middle East as the fulcrum of its beyond-domestic boundary businesses. “The company has made strides in its engagements with BAPCO in Bahrain, KNPC in Kuwait, PDO in Oman, projects in LNG & petrochemical sector in Africa and power plant project in Guyana among others,” Shukla underlines. Consulting services for the supervision of Guyana’s integrated NGL Plant and 300 MW CCGT power plant project (for Guyana Power and Gas Inc, ministry for natural resources) and PMC services for lower Zakum long-term development plan (phase 1 project) in the UAE (for ADNOC Offshore) are some of the other major projects EIL is handling.
Abu Dhabi is the clear hub for EIL’s growing international footprint. The company had earlier opened the office and, in recent years, it has been significantly expanded. “In the past few years, the EIL Abu Dhabi office has undergone significant expansion to support localisation efforts and serve the UAE and other regional clients directly from the local office. Since then, the office has grown steadily, becoming a fully independent, self-sustained and empowered operation with dedicated resources and facilities,” says a key official.
Simultaneously, the company is keen to make better penetration in verticals like cleaner energy by foraying intoto the area of bio-fuels and also infrastructure. It is at present involved in some prestigious projects like implementation of one of largest capacities bio-refinery projects in India for Assam Bio-refinery, which is inching close to the finishing line. It has also been engaged to lead the development of a 2G ethanol (bamboo-based bio-refinery) project for NRL in Meghalaya and a 2G ethanol plant for NTPC. EIL has also provided EPCM services to GAIL for the execution of the balance of plant and associated facilities for the installation of a 10 MW green hydrogen production facility in Vijaipur, Uttar Pradesh, which has already been commissioned. Additionally, it is also supporting the initiatives to set up bio-ATF plants in India in collaboration with CSIR-IIP and is implementing a 20 kl per day capacity bio-ATF facility for MRPL.
The most prominent trend in its infrastructure profile is the growing footprint for data centre projects, aviation, as well as urban development projects. It is involved in some of the major projects like Green Data Centre complexes at Manasar and Bengaluru for Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAID) and also helping banking sector giant SBI to put a data centre complex at Hyderabad. It has also bagged some other prestigious contracts in the infrastructure space, which includes redevelopment of Connaught Place for New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC).
Near-to-medium run scenario
The just concluded fiscal and the order book complexion reflect how EIL top brass would want to drive the company in the near-to-medium run. “We have secured about 36 per cent of our order inflow from the energy-efficient infrastructure segment, which includes high-end data centres, laboratories and academic complexes,” Jindal asserts. “This represents a significant increase in the diversified business segments’ share of the total order inflow”.
But the clear emphasis in the near run would be to expand internationally (Shukla is targeting 20 per cent of the revenue in the next two years from overseas operations), including in bigger and more lucrative markets like the US. “We are joining hands with some of the global giants to work in collaboration with them and find footing in more markets,” Shukla explains. “Our MoU with British Petroleum signed in the last fiscal is a step in that direction”. In February this year, BP and EIL inked an MoU under which the two companies will work together to identify capability to support oil, gas and refining activities.
Additionally, EIL is now also in the mood to have an additional centre in the Gulf to further harness new emerging opportunities. “The work for opening another foreign office in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in progress,” comments a senior official.
According to Shukla, the company has now adopted a larger collaborative approach (for domestic as also international businesses), wherein it has joined hands with other players. “Apart from BP, there are other significant collaborative MoUs we have signed in the recent past,” she informs. These include: an MoU with Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) for a collaborative partnership to provide comprehensive services and solutions in identified projects in the railway infrastructure, such as redevelopment of railway stations, buildings, tunnels and other infrastructure projects in India and abroad. Another critical international collaboration it has forged in recent times pertains to partnership with Australian firm Sunrise CSP Group, which is known for its expertise in solar concentrated technology. Clearly, the engineering PSU now seems to have more ammunition to keep its growth momentum intact – something that various research reports also testify.