India’s mining equipment manufacturing group BEML has been presented with the 2013 Engineering Excellence Award 2013 by Engineering Watch in New Delhi for the R&D that went into its BH150E electric drive mining truck. The product has also won the Best Engineering Marvel award in the category of Self-Reliance and Public Choice. The awards were presented by Shri Rawat, Secretary of the Department of Public Enterprises in the Government of India at a function held in New Delhi; and Shri Raghavendra Rao, the BEML General Manager received the awards on behalf of the company.

The BH150E was designed and developed in-house by BEML for the first time in the country. This product is described by BEML as “the best choice of its kind for import substitution in the mining sector besides enhancing self-reliance of the country and a strong enabler of energy security of the nation.” The awards were chosen by a jury panel comprising of Directors of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs); National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) who evaluated the technical merit of the products as well as considering various parameters such as contribution to self-reliance, innovation, impact on public life, readiness of technology for the future etc. BEML is a public sector company coming under the Indian Ministry of Defence and has been serving the Indian and international mining sectors for more than four decades through its varied product lines, having its own state-of-the-art R&D facilities.