The Hindu Business Line : Rlys hopeful of meeting demand for wheels in 5 years

With the new wheels production facility in Chapra in Bihar expected to go on stream in 2008 and the rail wheel factory in Bangalore itself almost doubling its capacity to 1.26 lakh wheel, the Indian Railways hopes to meet the phenomenal demand for the rolling stock in the next five-years.

The RWF provided the technical assistance and management consultancy to the Chapra project, whose wheels would be used in the Yelahanka plant for assembling wheel sets.

The Chapra unit with a rated capacity of 1,00,000 wheels per annum would initially be producing 50,000 wheels.

The RWF at Yelahanka, one of the few plants in the world with the capability to assemble the complete wheel sets with axels, itself was on an expansion mode with its capacity raised to produce 1.26 lakh units from of which 38,000 wheel sets are assembled. With this, its turnover would jump to Rs 501.40 crore this year against last year's Rs 478 crore, said Mr Girish Bahtnagar, RWF General Manager. The RWF also supplies loose wheels to customers in private sector. In the last five years, the RWF had invested Rs 103 crore to augment capacity and upgrade its IT facilities to derive higher production efficiency.

Mr Bhatnagar told Business Line that with the booming economy, the freight haulage was expected to increase to 1,100 million tonnes by 2016 from its current 632 mt. And the dedicated freight corridor (DFC) project itself taking off soon along with the metro rail projects to be implemented by a few States, the demand for the rolling stock was set to grow rapidly.

The RWF, which initially had technical collaboration with Griffin Wheel Co of the US for producing the wheels, has indigenised the know-how with its own patent rights, Mr Bahtnagar said.

In its bid to further improve the technical processes, the RWF has engaged the National Institute of Industrial Engineering and Technology and SAILCon (Steel Authority of India Ltd's division) as consultants to achieve higher efficiency and precision, said Mr Bhatnagar.