Railways to import wagon wheels

Faced with an acute shortage of wagon wheels, the railways are planning to import them from either East Europe or China. The railways face a shortage of about 40,000 wagon wheels this year.

This has ramifications for private container train companies which are new to the business, as they are finding it tough to procure wheel sets in India.

"We are going in for a large-scale wagon expansion this year. We do not have enough wheel sets for our own use, so it would be difficult for us to facilitate procurement for private container train operators," the officer said.

According to railway officials, the Rail Wheel Factory in Yelhanka in Bangalore has already used up its capacity fully and cannot produce more wheel sets to meet the railways' requirements.

The ministry has already floated a global tender for supply of wagon wheels, which may be opened later this month.

The wheel sets are expected to be procured from Romania, Ukraine or China as companies there have the expertise and ability to deliver in the price range sought by the railways.

The capacity of the wheel factory, which is coming up in Chhapra in Bihar, is also expected to be increased from 50,000 to 1 lakh.

However, this will take at least a couple of years. Many private container train operators have informed the railways about the difficulty they face in procuring wheel sets in India.

It is the smaller players who have a greater problem, as the bigger players are better placed on account of larger orders.

Recently, some of the smaller players had asked the larger container train operators whether they could acquire wheel sets together so that they would have economies of scale.

However, large players like Adani Exports and Reliance Industries are learnt to have their own plans for acquiring wagon wheels.