India is emerging as a hub for manufacturing metro rail coaches, a portion of which will be exported, Bharat Salhotra, managing director of Alstom Transport India, has said.
Interacting with media persons before the unveiling of the first coach body shell of Kochi metro at Alstom’s manufacturing unit at Sri City in Chitoor district of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Salhotra said the indigenisation process of coaches had been set in motion and supply chains were being developed. “Indigenisation would not be at the cost of quality,” he said.
“Our firm is willing to provide coaches for Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode light metro rail projects. We can provide coaches that can negotiate gradients and sharp curves,” he said, and added that one more shift would be set up at the unit to meet the increasing demand for metro coaches. The unit can manufacture up to 250 metro coaches per year. Apart from Sri City, the firm has a unit in Coimbatore and an engineering facility in Bangalore.
The managing director of Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL), Elias George, said Kochi metro was expecting to get the “fastest” delivery of coaches in India, and at the most cost effective rate.
