DEE Development Engineers Bets On Nuclear To Power Next Leg Of Growth

For decades, India has depended entirely on imports for a critical piece of nuclear power plant construction; specialised piping fabrication. DEE Development Engineers now wants to change that.

The BSE-listed company is exploring a joint venture with a global partner to build piping fabrication capabilities for India's nuclear sector, Chairman and Managing Director Krishan Lalit Bansal said in an interview with Outlook Business. The talks are still at an early stage, but Bansal expects the venture to be finalised by the end of the year, with a formal announcement likely in December.

The move is meant to support the government's ambitious target of building 100 GW of nuclear power capacity by 2047. Bansal said the project would require an initial capital outlay of over ₹100 crore and would help India move away from complete reliance on imports for a component he called one of the most critical aspects of nuclear power plant construction and maintenance.

A Bet On A Higher-Value Segment

Bansal sees nuclear piping as a step up from the conventional power piping business DEE has long operated in, offering significantly greater value addition. The timing, he said, is no accident. Interest in nuclear energy has been reviving globally since the Russia-Ukraine war forced countries to rethink how they secure their energy supplies.

"The conflict has contributed to a revival of interest in nuclear power as countries seek more secure and reliable sources of baseload energy," Bansal said.

The company had signalled this shift earlier too. During its FY27 earnings call with investors, DEE indicated it planned to bring nuclear into its portfolio within two years and was already in advanced discussions with a partner, particularly for export opportunities. Bansal said the company is already qualified to take up nuclear-related work within India, while additional approvals are being pursued to serve overseas markets, with the incoming partner expected to help meet those pre-qualification requirements.

Even so, Bansal was careful to temper expectations. Nuclear projects do not move fast, he said, and DEE's own revenue from the venture will take time to show up. "Meaningful revenue from the venture is expected only after around three years, given the lengthy qualification, approval, project-development and execution cycles associated with nuclear projects," he said.

Data Centres And A New Facility In Gujarat

Nuclear is not the only new frontier for DEE. The company recently secured its first order for core piping from a private entity in the data centre segment, a business it has just begun to build out. Alongside this, and as part of the government's Make in India initiative, DEE has commissioned the country's first heavy-wall seamless pipe manufacturing facility at Anjar in Gujarat, with an annual capacity of 7,000 tonnes. Built with an investment of over ₹100 crore, Bansal said the facility is capable of meeting India's entire requirement for high-strength specialised pipes used in mega power projects.

Much of this expansion is now behind the company. Bansal said DEE completed most of its planned capital expenditure in FY26, including scaling up the Anjar facility and commissioning the seamless pipe plant. The focus going forward, he said, has shifted to squeezing more value out of what has already been built: improving capacity utilisation, asset turns, margins and operating cash flows.

DEE was founded in 1988 and has grown into a specialised engineering and manufacturing company focused on process piping solutions for the power, oil and gas, and petrochemical sectors. It is the leading industrial pipe fabrication player in India today and ranks among the top five globally, welding steel, stainless steel and other alloy pipes for use across multiple industries. Beyond India, the company also runs a piping fabrication facility in Bang Pakong, near Bangkok in Thailand.

According to Bansal, the company's order book currently stands at ₹2,500 crore, with 60% of orders coming from power sector players and 35% from oil and gas majors, scheduled for execution over the next 12 to 18 months. Roughly half of these orders come from overseas customers, with DEE serving clients across the United States, Africa and Southeast Asia.

The numbers back up the momentum. As of June 30, 2026, DEE's closing order book stood at ₹2,428.2 crore, with 93% of it comprising process piping solutions and the remaining 7% heavy fabrication. Revenue for FY26 rose 38.1% year-on-year to ₹1,142 crore, up from ₹827 crore in FY25, while net profit climbed 75% to ₹42.7 crore from ₹24.4 crore.

Looking ahead, the company has maintained its FY27 target of revenue exceeding ₹1,500 crore, along with an operating EBITDA margin of over 19%. That growth, the company said, will come from execution across its core power and oil and gas businesses, better utilisation of its expanded manufacturing footprint, and the ramp-up of its seamless pipe facility. Taken together, these plans are meant to more than double DEE's topline to over ₹2,500 crore by 2030, up from ₹1,200 crore in FY26.