Alstom to double metro coach building capacity in India as order book grows

The company is in talks with Jindal to source specialised stainless for coaches

Alstom is planning to double its metro coach manufacturing capacity at Sri City as its order book for both domestic and export orders is growing. The facility will also be executing the Rs 25-billion order for the Mumbai metro.   
 

The company has bagged orders from metro projects in Chennai, Kochi, Lucknow and Mumbai. From overseas, it has bagged orders from Sydney in Australia and Montreal in Canada. In the past three years, it has supplied 500 cars. In the next 18 months, another 500 cars will be delivered from this facility. 

Speaking to reporters after flagging off Made-in-India coaches to Sydney, the first export order for the company from India, Alain Spohr, managing director (India and South Asia), Alstom, said that the current capacity of the facility was 20 cars per month and the utilisation was 16-18 cars a month.  

With the order flow from domestic and global markets increasing, the company has decided to double its capacity. 

The company is setting up a second line that will be ready by the second quarter of the next financial year. Compared to the existing one, which is linear, the new line will be modular. 

"We firmly believe in India's role as a manufacturing and engineering hub for international markets and this milestone bears witness to that," said Ling Fang, senior vice-president (Asia-Pacific) at Alstom.  

Having begun production in 2014, Alstom's facility is one of the top four globally in terms of productivity -- it can bring out 20 coaches a month. 

For its second export order -- the light metro project in Montreal, which will start from early 2019 -- the facility will deliver 106 trains with 212 coaches. The contract is worth $1.8 billion and Alstom's share will be around $1.4 billion. 

The contract for Mumbai Metro Line 3, including supplying of cars, signalling (company is in L1) and infrastructure (power supply and telecom), will begin from next year. The rolling stock order to deliver 248 cars alone would be worth around Rs 25 billion.

Localisation is around 70 per cent, said Spohr, adding that the company was in talks with Jindal to source specialised stainless steel for metro coaches. At present, such steel is being imported.  

The company's first locally-manufactured locomotive from the Madhepura facility in Bihar is under trial at present. The company has also bagged an order for 800 locomotives and is in the process of assembling the seventh locomotive. The total order size is Rs 2.80 trillion.