Bombardier to make India exports hub for passenger trains

Canada-based passenger trains maker Bombardier is planning to develop India as the exports hub for its products and solutions to cater to Europe, South America and the Middle East markets.

"With Prime Minister Narendra Modi opening the Indian railways sector for foreign investments, we see a huge opportunity for our products. But Make in India call has also encouraged us to enhance our manufacturing and services capabilities in India for catering to our global demand," Bombardier Transportation India Chief Country Representative Harsh Dhingra told PTI.

The company has a manufacturing facility in Savli, Gujarat that produces 450 commuter cars along with bogies and other components, which are also exported to markets like Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

Bombardier produces propulsion components and rail control solution systems and also provides engineering support for software development and testing of rail vehicles engineering.

While the propulsion components factory is located at Maneja in Vadodara, the rail control solutions facility is in Gurgaon.

"We want to increase our technical competence and capacity to cater to the specific needs of operators as well as to have its local organisation participating in projects that Bombardier develops in other parts of the globe especially the European markets," he said.

Bombardier is providing technical expertise for projects in the UK, Germany, Switzerland and the US, among others.

A substantial portion of USD 2.7 billion for Bombardier Transportation is being executed at its Indian sites in Savli and Maneja, he said.

"As the site was built with the intention to develop export-oriented activities also, we keep evaluating prospects for exporting metro cars and bogies to Asia Pacific, Europe and North America," Dhingra said.

Apart from commuter cars and components, the company has also launched a traffic management system for Mumbai commuter rail system, which it plans to repeat in other projects, not only in rail vehicles and rail control solutions but also in total transit systems.