Alstom to set up Rs 20k-cr Bihar unit to make 800 high-power locomotives

Phase-I of the facility, to produce India's most powerful locomotives, may be completed by September

French mobility equipment manufacturer Alstom expects the first phase of its Rs 20,000-crore electric locomotive manufacturing facility, which will manufacture 800 super high-power locomotives, in Madhepura, Bihar, to be ready by September this year.

The company, which is currently exporting rail solutions to Australia from India, is now looking at exports to the Middle East, said Bharat Salhotra, managing director for transport operations at Alstom in India and South Asia.

"The factory is under construction and phase one is expected to be ready by September of the current year. We should be rolling out the first locomotive from the plant by early next year," he said. The first train will be put through a rigorous test for thousands of kilometres and the second and third locomotives will also be prototypes, which will undergo a lot of tests. The facility is being set up under a joint-venture between Alstom and Indian Railway.

"Starting from locomotive number four, they will be inducted into operations. We will be manufacturing about 100 locomotives a year at the peak of manufacturing. We will start with one locomotive in the first year, four in the second and, from the fifth year onward, we will be making 100 locomotives," he elaborated. The locomotives have 12,000 horsepower, the highest in the country.

The first locomotive will be more of an assembly and the factory will continue to grow and expand till it can produce a hundred of them. The last year of completion of the manufacturing contract is 2035-36, but the company will continue with service maintenance for several years. The Madhepura project is worth Rs 20,000 crore and the foreign direct investment component in the project is about Rs 1,200 crore.

The company is into developing and marketing systems, equipment, and services for the railway sector. It is currently executing metro rail projects in several Indian cities, including Chennai, Kochi, and Lucknow, where it is supplying rolling stock manufactured out of its facility in SriCity integrated business city, in Andhra Pradesh. With various metro projects and exports to Australia, the SriCity facility, which has a capacity of 240 metro cars a year, is running at full capacity.

However, for Chennai, it has already supplied 39 trains out of the total 42 under contract and the order for Lucknow is also expected to be completed soon. While it is expecting more projects from various metros in India to start soon, it is also looking at exporting to the Middle East from the Indian facility. The decision on the destination and the quantum of exports is taken globally depending upon various aspects, including the availability of free capacity in the facility and the cost factor.

The company's design team in India is also working on various international projects.

Commenting on the various metro rail projects in the country, Salhotra said that if the governments could bring in a standarised format, for instance for the size of the cars, the cost could be brought down significantly. With each metro ordering different specifications and requirements, at present, the production is manpower intensive and time consuming compared to more automated and standardised large-scale manufacturing.

The French major is also working on an electric bus, which is more akin to a tram that does not require a track, globally and would look at opportunities in India too once the project matures.