Bombardier eyes metro rail car exports from Savli unit

Having recently won metro rail car orders from Australia for its Savli (Gujarat) unit, the Indian arm of Bombardier Transportation, the global rail vehicle manufacturing company, plans to expand its reach abroad, especially in Asian countries.

"Though we cater to both domestic and export markets, the latter offer a good opportunity. We recently bagged an export order from Australia for 400 metro cars. We are looking at Asian markets; one of the fastest growing regions for metro cars," said Harsh Dhingra, director and chief country representative of the French-headquartered company.

The company has a manufacturing capacity of one metro car a day at Savli (near Vadodara). Bombardier is also looking at the domestic market in India for metro and monorail car supply from here.

"We bid recently for a driverless monorail for the Kerala Monorail project. We are looking at other metro and mono rail projects across the country, such as the next leg of the Delhi metro, Bangalore metro and Mumbai monorail, apart from similar projects in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Pune and Nagpur," said Dhingra.

It is also looking at tapping Indian Railways' growing need for electric multiple unit cars for inter-city trains. It was preparing to bid for upcoming tenders, Dhingra had earlier told Business Standard.

While the company doesn't manufacture EMU cars or trains in India as of now, it does assemble locomotives at Savli, as part of its agreement with Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc, a subsidiary of Progress Rail Services Corporation, a Caterpillar company.

Dhingra also stated earlier that Bombardier estimates an order book of 500 metro cars from Delhi, 300 from Bangalore, 100 each from Kochi and Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar and 120-150 from the Mumbai metro projects. The company expects demand for metro cars in the country to touch 2,000 in the next five years.