CRRC India, a subsidiary of the Chinese rolling stock and components conglomerate Nanjing Puzhen Co. Ltd, has set foot in Sri City to establish its manufacturing plant to make metro coaches.
This will be the second metro coach making plant in Sri City after Alstom. The company proposes to invest ₹350 crore and create 500 jobs.
At the ground-breaking ceremony conducted on Wednesday, Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) Vice-Chairman and Managing Director K. Raveen Kumar Reddy performed the ‘bhoomi puja’, in the presence of CRRC Director (Operations) Harsh Bajpayee and Sri City Founder Managing Director Ravindra Sannareddy and Chennai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (CMRCL) Additional General Manager Satheesh Prabhu.
With Alstom and CRRC in its kitty, Andhra Pradesh would be supplying around 80% of requirements of metro projects across the country, Mr. Raveen Kumar said, while appreciating Sri City for its quick as well as sustainable growth. “With an investor-friendly industrial policy, the State is developing multi-sector or sector-specific industrial clusters in different districts covered under Vizag-Chennai, Bengaluru-Chennai and Hyderabad-Bengaluru industrial corridors and APIIC is equipping them with infrastructure on the model of Sri City”, he explained, indicating that business delegations from Taiwan, China, Japan and Korea had already visited some of the clusters and evinced interest to invest.
“The arrival of the world’s largest producer of metro coaches will make a great difference in increasing the country’s production capacity,” Mr. Sannareddy said. In his ‘virtual’ address, CRRC India Chairman Zeng Yao Zheng attributed his preference of Sri City to its well-planned infrastructure, thanking the Central and State governments for the opportunity.
