Image(Representational) : team-bhp
The government informed that maiden consignment of six metro coaches made in Bombardier facility in Savli, Vadodara were shipped to Australian government from Mumbai port.
The production and exportation of metro coaches is a boost in “Make in India” campaign which aims at turning the country into a global manufacturing destination. The sustained indigenization initiatives of manufacturing railway wagons within India had driven India to such a landmark.
Being the first of its kind export, India creates history in the manufacturing sector. As a part of the deal, in the coming 2 and a half year 450 such commuter cars with bogies will be exported to Australia. The project costing a total of 2.7 billion USD for the Canadian firm, Bombardier Transportation will be executed in their Vadodara facility. The Savli site has been developed for the export oriented activities.
Bombardier is a diversified Canadian engineering company. One of the areas in which they are a world leader is transportation. Bombardier Transportation is headquartered in Germany and established a presence in India first in 1989.
They established a manufacturing facility in Maneja near Vadodara in Gujarat as far back as 1997, during the IK Gujral Prime Ministership of the Janata Dal Party. In 2008, they expanded with the establishment of the Savli facility, also near Vadodara, where the coaches for Australia have been made. Bombardier also has an engineering centre in Hyderabad since 2003, operated by Infotech.
The company has strong ties with the Indian railways and has been contributing coaches to the Delhi Metro and to Mumbai suburban for a long time. The Savli plant has also been helping Bombardier service their projects worldwide, including BART in San Francisco and Crossrail in the UK.
“The maiden consignment of six metro coaches built in Baroda for export to the Australian government were shipped from Mumbai Port as Mumbai Port holds supremacy in handling of over-sized precious cargo ” a statement from Ministry of Shipping said.
The coaches are 75 feet long and weigh 46 tonnes each, requiring a superior and highly specialized loading operation with a high degree of precision, it added.
“The entire stevedoring operation (loading into ship) of these prestigious over-sized metro coaches has been done in-house by Mumbai Port Trust unlike any other port in India where private operators carry out such operations,” the statement said.
Some of the facts about indigenous railway wagons that will make every Indian proud:
■ India will be exporting 521 bogie frames to Brazil for Sao Paulo monorail.
■ Recently, Delhi metro achieved the landmark of producing 90% of its wagons locally. Of the 1,234 coaches in Phase I and II, only a mere 36 were from Germany and 64 were from Korea. In the III phase, out of 846 coaches that have been ordered, only 120 are from Korea and rest are being manufactured in India.
■ Three Metro coach manufacturing units have already been established in India. While Bombardier Transportation has a unit in Savli (Gujarat), state-owned Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) has a unit in Bengaluru and Alstom has established a new facility at Sricity near Chennai creating hundreds of jobs.
■ Kochi Metro Rail (KMRL) recently received the first set of Made in India coaches five months ahead of schedule from the French company Alstom Transport.
■ The capital costs of Metro coaches in India are substantially lower than the rest of the world. For instance, while the capital cost of a coach is around Rs 8.94 crore in India, the cost in Vancouver is Rs 16.08 crore and in San Francisco is Rs 15.13 crore
■ In the coming 5 years there will be a demand of 2000 metro trains in India will prove to be a boon for India’s manufacturing sector.
The Logical Indian congratulates the current government, UPA-1 government and the Canadian firm on accomplishing this achievement and hopes that manufacturing sector which seems gloomy at the present time improves.
