Alstom Transport India has started expanding its rolling stock manufacturing facility at Sri City, near Tada, in Andhra Pradesh, a top company official said.
Talking to The Hindu , Bharat Salhotra, Managing Director, Alstom Transport India said, “We have started gradually expanding our manufacturing capacity. Over the next few months, the production capacity of rolling stocks will get enhanced to 20 metro train cars per month from seven cars per month. At a later date, we might enhance this number to 300 train cars per annum.”
“The expansion is being planned keeping in mind the ever-rising demand for public transportation from extremely congested cities. We also have developed a low-cost transportation model for tier-II cities, which has been sent to the Centre. Besides manufacturing and supplying rolling stocks, we are ready to provide full range of turnkey services such as signalling systems, power supply and track work as more cities such as Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Varanasi, Guntur and Ahmedabad are planning to introduce metro rail services,” he said.
About the investment, Mr. Bharat said it would be significant as India was turning into an important market for Alstom after ‘several wins’ (metro rail projects). The number of employees in India had risen to 1,600 from 350 and this would reach 3,000 in three years.
“We are planning to service domestic as well as overseas markets too. Over the next few years, we expect about 50 per cent of revenue to come from exports,” he said.
Mentioning that the first trial run of Kochi Metro Rail was conducted successfully on Thursday, he said it was the first ‘Make in India’ project to be conceptualised, designed, manufactured and tested by an Indian team. The indigenisation level was 70 per cent.
Starting with an order book of about Rs.1,000 crore two years ago, Alstom Transport India today has order book exceeding Rs.20,000 crore. It includes supplying 800 locomotives to the Indian Railways in Bihar and over 330 metro train cars for Chennai, Kochi and Lucknow Metro Rail Projects. The company will also export train cars to Sydney Metro Rail.
