 "Indrajit Mookerjee, Executive Director & Vice-Chairman, Texmaco")
As rising congestion of freight and passenger trains has caused a slowdown in freight growth for Indian Railways, India’s largest wagon manufacturer — Kolkata-based Texmaco Rail and Engineering — expects order growth for freight cars (wagons) to taper in the short term.
This has prompted the company to focus on expanding its non-wagon verticals like infra and electrification during this period.
“Currently, we have an order book which will run into the next 14-15 months. Generally speaking, the country needs more wagons due to the need to move more commodities, and railways will buy more. It is also trying to bring in lots of passenger trains to improve passenger mobility, and the combined effect of these two is bringing huge congestion on the railway tracks, with insufficiency in safety and signalling systems,” Indrajit Mookerjee, executive director and vice-chairman of the company told Business Standard in a telephonic interview.
The company had won a large order of over 20,067 wagons in 2022, when the railways floated a tender to procure over 70,000 wagons from a single order. It has won multiple large orders post that announcement too.
Meanwhile, freight growth is expected to rise by 2.9 per cent in the current financial year, and this target is set at 1700 mt in 2025-26, which is 4 per cent higher over the revised budget estimates of FY25.
“Moving forward, the accelerated rate of orders that had come in the past may come down, and I think we should be prepared for this. We will keep on getting orders as private players have a demand for a lot of (wagons for) special commodities. On the railways side, the accelerated growth of orders may not be there two or three years down the road till the time infrastructure improves. So, there may be a little fall, after which it will start going up again,” Mookerjee said.
The company will focus on expanding its rail infrastructure and electrification (both railway and non-railway) segments during this period of anticipated moderation.
“It is a very cautious prediction, but it’s better to be cautious than be bullish. All our efforts are based on this hypothesis. It’s the logical move for us since railways wants to improve on infrastructure such as lines, signalling, safety, and electrification. So, this is the area where we are putting attention to rebuilding our rail infrastructure group. We have a strong infra and electrification segment, and we will be strengthening it even further to cope with the evolving requirements,” the vice-chairman said.
In 2018, the group acquired Bright Power Projects – a company specialising in overhead electrification (OHE), which currently accounts for around 8.5 per cent of the company’s revenue. The company expects strong growth for Bright Power in the non-railway electrification sector, which currently accounts for around 1-2 per cent of the company’s turnover, according to Mookerjee.
Texmaco is also going to make a move on Kavach systems, which involves a variety of software and hardware components. The company is expected to establish collaboration, but Mookerjee didn’t disclose details citing terms of non-disclosure.
