HAL-L&T, NSIL sign Rs 860-cr formal agreement for 5 PSLVs

BENGALURU: Space PSU NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) on Monday signed a Rs 860-crore formal agreement with the HAL-L&T consortium for manufacturing of five PSLV launch vehicles.
The TOI was the first to report in April that the consortium had bagged the project. As per the agreement, the consortium is expected to supply the first PSLV in 24 months and one each every six months thereafter.
“Isro is mandated to empower NSIL, which has been growing. More operational satellites will move to NSIL in the coming years. So far as the PSLVs Five is only a notional number. I want NSIL to build as many as they want commercially if there are opportunities. I’m confident they will also innovate and bring down the cost and make it more commercially viable,” Somanath said.
HAL-L&T consortium bagged Rs 860 crore contract for end-to-end realisation of five PSLVs over a period of four years from NSIL.
Over the years, Isro’s PSLV has successfully performed more than 52 successful flights. Isro formed a separate entity — NSIL — with the primary mandate of enabling Indian industries to scale up high-technology manufacturing and the production base for meeting the needs of the space programme.
“Based on competitive bidding, the HAL led consortium emerged as the successful bidder,” HAL said in a statement.
As reported earlier by TOI, while HAL is the lead partner, the work will be shared nearly equally with L&T. “We will, of course, use all our vendors. We feel we were best equipped to handle a contract of this magnitude. While some help will come from Isro on the mission side, we will be carrying out all the other work. Slowly, PSLV will become an out-sourced item for Isro,” former HAL CMD R Madhavan had said when NSIL completed the tender process.
Although Isro had been talking about commercialising PSLV production, the expression of interest (EoI) was floated only in August 2019 and multiple firms and consortia had submitted their interests in September 2019. Following this, NSIL floated the RFP in December 2020, shortlisted the three entities in early 2021 and these entities submitted the bids in July 2021. It then took NSIL eight months to open the bid.