Rail Wheel Factory turnover up 71%

Rail Wheel Factory (RWF), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways engaged in the manufacture of axles, wheels and wheelsets, has registered a 71 per cent growth in its turnover at Rs 917.03 crore for year-ended March 31, 2009, compared to the previous financial year.

During the year, RWF for the first time crossed a 200,000 wheel production mark and produced 209,460 wheels, a growth of 43 per cent over the last fiscal. The production of axles has gone up by 59.6 per cent to 84,428 units compared to the last fiscal. Its wheelsets (two wheels and one axle) output for the year has also increased by 59.6 per cent to 64,673 units.

R K Upadhyay, general manager, RWF said, “All our machine shops have achieved the maximum production surpassing all the previous records. We have also set new records in areas other than production. Our turnover has gone up 71 per cent and we have met 100 per cent demand from the Indian Railways during the year”.

The cumulative sale value of RWF products for the year 2008-09 to Non Railway Customers (NRC) is Rs 28.48 crore and earned a profit of Rs 51 lakh. Its non railway customers include wagon builders like Hindustan Development Engineering Corporation, Braith Waite, Texmaco and BEML among others. However, RWF has to look for new markets other than the Indian Railways in the next two years after the new manufacturing plant with a capacity of 100,000 wheels per annum is commissioned at Chhapra in Bihar sometime in 2011.

RWF has also made significant improvement in bringing down the rejection percentage from a high of 6-7 per cent per annum to 4 per cent last year and is aiming at bringing it further down to 1 per cent.

Already the RWF has set a benchmark globally, he said.