Titagarh to launch US wagons

The prototype from the Titagarh Wagon-Freight Car America stable will be ready by the middle of next year, said Umesh Chowdhary, vice chairman and managing director, Titagarh Wagons.

Titagarh has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Freight Car America (FCA) for design, development, manufacture and sales of aluminium coal cars for the Indian market.

The project would be executed in three phases. Chowdhary said, the first phase would be design, the second creating prototype while the third phase would be setting up the plant.

The investment in the project would be $30-$40 million.

“The third phase will be completed by the second quarter of 2010,” said Chowdhary.

FCA is a major player in the North American railroad freight car industry and market leader in the aluminium coal car segment with a market share of 80 per cent in North America. In order to tap the growing Indian railcar market and with its successful experience, FCA has entered into a joint venture with Titagarh Wagons to manufacture light-weight coal gondolas and hoppers for sale in the Indian market.

Chowdhary said, while the downturn had affected investor confidence and business sentiment to some extent, demand from railways had not gone down. “They realize that this is the right time to build capacity,” he said. Titagarh happens to be one of the key supplier to the Indian Railways and manufactures almost all the designs of wagons running on the Indian Railway network.

The company started from an initial capacity of half-a-wagon per day and today has a capacity to manufacture 20-25 wagons per day.

Riding on the back of railway demand, Titagarh is hoping to end the year with decent growth.

The company’s total income in the first six months of the current financial year was to the tune of Rs 428 crore compared to Rs 561 crore for the whole of last year.