The Hindu Business Line : Bombardier bags contract for metro signalling

Snapshot
The company’s bags first metro signalling contract in India
Plans to ramp up its Vadodara engineering centre unit facilities
Vadodara facility to serve South East Asian countries

Mamuni Das

New Delhi, Oct 8

Canadian firm Bombardier Transportation has bagged its first contract in the area of signalling solutions for mass rapid transport systems in India. Earlier, the company has bagged a contract to provide metro coaches in the country.

Declining to name the mass rapid transport operator from which the company has bagged the contract, Mr Ake Wennberg, Chief Technology Officer, Bombardier Transportation, told Business Line, “We have bagged a contract to provide signalling systems to a metro operator in India. This is a significant win for us as this is the first such contract in the Indian mass rapid transit market, which is booming. Particularly after the successful implementation of Delhi Metro project which avoided major time and cost over-runs, India is being eyed by everyone (all metro players) in the world.”

In India, while Kolkata and Delhi already have metro systems, other cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad have plans to implement metro rail systems. Bombardier would serve this signalling contract by ramping up its engineering centre in Vadodara, where the company is also in the process of setting up a metro coach manufacturing unit.

Having bagged a $590-million tender earlier this year to supply metro coaches to Delhi Metro, Bombardier Transportation plans to set up the country’s first metro coach factory in Vadodara by May-June 2008, with an investment of over €25 million.

Bombardier will manufacture coach shells and bogies in the new factory and expand its existing factory (which manufactures converters for Indian Railways’ locomotives) to make propulsion equipment for metro coaches.

About 500-550 workers would be hired for the factory, comprising about 450 blue-collar workers and 100 supervisors and engineers. Apart from the metro rail market in India, Bombardier is likely to serve the South Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia from this facility. Bombardiers’ European facilities serve the business in these countries at present.

From its engineering centre located in Hyderabad, Bombardier has served railway systems in North America, Europe, Australia, Germany, France. “The Hyderabad Centre also worked for the rolling stock provided by Bombardier for the train to Lhasa in Tibet built by the Chinese,” said Mr Wennberg adding that the Hyderabad centre, with about 350 engineers, would now work towards improving its performance on the mechanical designing side.

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