Railways to open two plants to meet 'Rail Neer' demand

The railways are planning to set up at least two more plants to tide over the acute shortage of its bottled water, Rail Neer, sold at stations. The shortage is to the extent of about 20,000 bottles per hour.

With one plant coming up in Tamil Nadu, the railways are exploring the possibility of setting up another in Maharashtra. The new operations will bring the total number of Rail Neer plants in the country to four. IRCTC has a Rail Neer plant near Pune in Danapur and one at Nangloi in Delhi. Both have the capacity of producing 4,000 bottles an hour.

While the investment for the Chennai plant would be around Rs 5.5 crore, plans for the Maharashtra operation had not been firmed up as yet, said a company executive.

"Five-six additional plants were needed with a production capacity of 4,000-5,000 bottles in an hour to meet the rising demand," the executive added. He also said the location for only two of them had been decided till date.

While the Tamil Nadu plant will have a capacity to produce 4,000 bottles per hour, the plan for the Maharashtra plant is to make it slightly bigger with a production capacity of about 5,000 bottles an hour.

The Chennai plant has been hanging fire for over a year now. The project had hit a road-block owing to delay in procuring requisite state clearances.

Now, with the state giving permission, IRCTC is conducting some tests for setting up the project. The company executive said the Nangloi plant, set up in 2003, had already broken even this year.