Maruti Suzuki moved 6.70 lakh cars by rail in last 6 years; green mode helps save fuel, cost

The country’s largest passenger vehicles maker Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) on Wednesday said it has transported over 6.70 lakh cars through the Indian Railways in the past six years, witnessing a CAGR of over 18 per cent.

The first dispatch by double decker flexi-deck rakes took place in March 2014, it said.

The increased focus on using railways has helped the company offset nearly 3,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. In addition, over 100 million litres of precious fossil fuel was saved, as the company could avoid over one-lakh truck trips by road, it said.

In financial year 2019-20, over 1.78 lakh cars were dispatched by rail, a 15 per cent increase over previous year.

This accounts for nearly 12 per cent of total sales of the company in the year, MSIL said.

“Considering the increasing volumes, our team felt the need for largescale logistics flow. We realised, that not only for expansion but also for risk mitigation we have to look beyond road mode logistics,” Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, MSIL said.

Maruti Suzuki, a pioneer in the use of railways to ferry finished vehicles, has come a long way from using single deck converted rakes to deploying high speed, high capacity new design double deck rakes.

The operations started with the use of Indian Railway wagons (converted from old passenger coaches). These single deck wagons were christened as New Modified Goods (NMG) with a capacity to handle 125 cars.

With growing volumes, there was a need for a shift to high capacity dedicated wagons. Accordingly, Indian Railways’ design arm Research Design and Standard’s Organization came up with a new design called BCACM after taking suggestions from several manufacturers including Maruti Suzuki.

The double decker rakes had a capacity of 265 cars (over 100 per cent increase in carrying capacity). Since its inception, over 1.40 lakh cars have been dispatched through these rakes.

The capacity increased by 20 per cent from 265 cars to 318. Moreover, these rakes were designed to be operated at a speed limit of 95 km/hr, highest for any goods train in India. Till date 27 such high capacity rakes have been inducted by Maruti Suzuki and its service providers.

Maruti Suzuki is the first auto manufacturer in the country to obtain Automobile Freight Train Operator (AFTO) licence. This allows private firms to fabricate and operate high speed, high capacity auto-wagon rakes on the Indian Railways’ network.

At present, Maruti Suzuki utilises five loading terminals (Gurgaon, Farukhnagar, Kathuwas, Patli and Detroj) and 13 destination terminals (Bangalore, Nagpur, Mumbai, Guwahati, Mundra Port, Indore, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, NCR, Siliguri and Agartala).

With the addition of Agartala, the reach of rail mode has now been extended to far North East. It has helped to reduce the transportation time to these states by nearly half, the company added.

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