Railway coach making arms to see 30% surge in FY20 to around 8,000 units

Coach manufacturing units of the railways are expected to see over 30 per cent increase in production in FY20 to around 8,000 units and a further jump by another 25 per cent in FY21. 

The railways is also setting sights on exporting coaches, trainsets, wheels and other accessories to countries in Asia, Africa and North America.

“At present, our exports are minimal and concentrated in neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Now, we are getting interests from countries in North America. In North America, we are going to start with wheels and accessories first and will expand to coaches and trainsets later,” said Rajesh Agrawal, member (rolling stock), Railway Board, while addressing the media on Wednesday. 

All manufacturing utilities of the railways put together have produced around 6,000 units in FY19, which is expected to increase to around 8,000 as of now. 

Agrawal said wheel factories, too, have seen exponential growth in production during the last one year.

The railways has also lined up plans to increase freight carrying capacity by another billion tonnes from the existing figure of over 1 billion tonnes in the next four to five years. 

The idea is to increase the share of rail in India’s overall freight traffic from a mere 20-25 per cent now to around 45 per cent. 

“India has a total of 4-5 billion tonnes freight and we have to increase the share of railways to as high as possible. This will be better for the economy. Our plan is to reduce freight logistics cost from 14 per cent to 9 per cent, too,” he said.

The decrease in logistics cost will be coming through measures like commissioning of eastern and western dedicated freight corridors and new wagon designs catering to specific clients, including the automobile industry. 

He added that the share of coal, which is around 50 per cent of the overall freight, is expected to decline. 

The automobile sector is a high priority area for the national transporter.

“Now, the railways share in the automobile sector is even less than 10 per cent. Total auto freight comes to around four million vehicles. Hence, there is a huge potential,” he said. 

The national transporter is reaching out to all carmakers and two-wheeler players in this regard. Maruti Suzuki (MSIL) had recently said it is likely to transport at least half of its cars via the railways by 2030. It had transported only 500,000 cars via the rail route in the four years till FY19. Automobile players are currently carrying cars on tracks through service providers like APL Vascor and Adani Logistics. “If coal traffic declines, containers are anyway going to take the majority share while automobiles and other products will be fresh additions,” he added.