Titagarh Wagons on Saturday said the first indigenously built aluminium metro train has been flagged off from its Uttarpara plant.
This train is part of an order for design, manufacture and supply of metro coaches for the Pune Metro project, which the company had bagged in 2019. Titagarh will supply three trains from its plant in Italy and the remaining 31 from its Indian facilities.
The total contract for 34 trains is valued at Rs 1,100 crore and scheduled for execution by the end of 2022-23.
The company’s Italian arm — Titagarh Firema — is equipped with the technology to make these coaches and caters to the European market.
The first of the three trains from the Italian subsidiary was flagged off and launched for normal operations on March 7, 2022.
Titagarh Wagons said that after winning the Pune Metro award, the company has upgraded its unit at Uttarpara to manufacture these modern metro coaches and has indigenised several critical components such as bogie frames, interiors, brake systems for these trains. The company also plans to ramp up its production capacity of coaches over the next two years.
"The dream and vision of Titagarh is to be a fully integrated metro and modern passenger train manufacturer in India, not only catering to the Indian market, but also making in India for the world. We now have the capacity to manufacture upto 250 coaches a year and will enhance this to be able to produce 450 coaches per year in a couple of years. Further, we will be continuously working on increasing the indigenous content and have set up a state of the art facility for manufacturing traction motors, traction converters etc. in house," said Umesh Chowdhary, vice chairman and managing director of Titagarh Wagons.
"The group is participating in various other tenders for metro coaches in India in addition to the focus on propulsion vertical," Chowdhary said.
Manoj Joshi, chairman, Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited and secretary ministry of housing and urban affairs flagged off the train on Saturday.
