Titagarh Wagons is planning a post-pandemic turnaround that involves increasing revenue three times over the next three years and targeting new markets in Africa, West Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and the US with its freight cars and transit trains made in India.
According to Umesh Chowdhary, General Manager and CEO of the Kolkata-based railcar manufacturer, the goal for the next two to three years is to develop an export market for both the freight car and transit rail business. The international certification and service accreditation application has now been completed for further acceptance of its products globally.
“We recently opened an office in the United States. We already have a presence in Europe through our Italian subsidiary dedicated to the manufacture of transit trains. So we will develop the export market where we don’t have much of a presence yet,” Chowdhary told the Mint.
“We are just trying to sign a contract, a small one, from our operations in India to export to the United States. We will create synergies between our operations in India and Italy to cover the global market for both freight and transit business,” he said.
Titagarh’s export order to the US will be one of the first shipments of a locally manufactured rail product to North America, unlike its exports of metro trains, which are shipped to countries in Europe from its Italian subsidiary. Titagarh Firema SpA, which manufactures passenger and metro carriages.
The order book for the Italian operation is around $4,500-5,000 crore, while the Indian trading order book as of December 2021 stood at around $2400-2500 crores. Italy’s order book has doubled in the last two years, going from about $2,500 crore in 2020.
According to Chowdhary, along with the boost in exports and the big pick-up in domestic operations, Indian Railways has announced its biggest three-year tender for the supply of nearly 1 lakh wagons, Titagarh’s revenue should grow at the same pace in the next years. as in the three-year period ending in March 2021.
In that three-year period (2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21), the company posted an average revenue of around $Rs 900-1,000 crore, against an average of $300 million rupees in the previous three years. “We hope and believe that we have the wherewithal to continue similar growth trajectories over the next three-year period,” Choudhary said.
Revenue growth will also come from new businesses that the company has entered through acquisitions. Acquired Titagarh Wagon is able to manufacture passenger and metro trains through its Italian acquisition and has engaged in shipbuilding especially for the Indian armed forces through its recent acquisition of land and infrastructure from Precision Shipyard located in False, Bengal. Western.
“Coupled with export orders and the expansion of our transit rail and shipbuilding operations, the share of railcars in our total operations would fall from traditionally high levels of 90% to around 45% in the coming years.” Choudhary said.
However, he added, “we are producing around 400 to 500 cars per month, but we have a capacity of up to 700.”
