In August WEG shipped the last motors of the second and third steps of the HNSS irrigation project promoted by the Indian government with incentives of the World Bank. The objective is to provide the fields with fertile conditions and also guarantee water for human consumption. Today two thirds of the Indian agricultural production depend on irrigation. That corresponds to 83% of the water consumption. In addition, it is necessary to feed the second largest population of the world, with over a billion inhabitants.

The HNSS project is considered one of the largest in the world and must benefit more than 80 million people, irrigating an area of about 2.5 thousand km². WEG participates of the irrigation system through the company Kirloskar Brothers Limited from India. KBL buys the motors, assembles the water pump and sells the pumping system to the Irrigation Secretariat of the state of Andrah Pradesh in the east of India. The Indian manufacturer of pumps supplies the full project to the public company including civil construction.

In all, WEG shipped, through the Port of Itajaí in Brazil , 72 large synchronous vertical motors which offer high efficiency with lower power consumption and 72 brake sets, power panels and spare parts. The power rating supplied was 307,600 kW, equivalent to one third of the installed capacity of a thermoelectric plant like the Jorge Lacerda complex in Capivari de Baixo (Santa Catarina state), which is among the largest ones in Latin America. In the first step – executed in 2008 and 2009 – WEG supplied KBL with 32 high voltage motors. “We have been selling to this company since 2004. Along the past seven years we have already supplied approximately 200 motors just for irrigation projects”, says Rodrigo Vallandro de Carvalho, from Asia Pacific of WEG International Division (WID).

Plant in India

Besides the high efficiency of the motors, the difference of the supply to KBL is the personalized service by the branch in India – office which has been serving the Indian market since 2004. The investment of the company in the country – where it keeps business in the areas of irrigation, electric, hydraulic and thermal power generation – is even more visible now. WEG is building an electric motor plant in Hosur, in the province of Tamil Nadu, south of India. The plant is scheduled to start production at the end of 2010 and will produce high voltage motors and generators.