Texmaco to manufacture metro rail coaches

KK Birla Group engineering company Texmaco Ltd has decided to foray into metro rail coach manufacturing with an eye on the huge potential the sector is expected to throw up in the next couple of years.

KK Birla Group engineering company Texmaco Ltd has decided to foray into metro rail coach manufacturing with an eye on the huge potential the sector is expected to throw up in the next couple of years.

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Texmaco, which has floated a 50:50 joint venture with United Group Ltd of Australia for manufacturing freight cars and coaches, has inked a memorandum of understanding with a Japanese consortium comprising of Kawasaki, Itochu and Toshiba for manufacturing these new-age metro rail coaches.

Texmaco chairman Saroj Poddar said that the Texmaco-UGL combine is likely to be a minority shareholder in the proposed company. It may be recalled that a host of Indian cities including Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad are contemplating metro rail projects soon.

Poddar said that the coaches will initially be manufactured in its existing production facility in West Bengal but subsequently the company would set up a Greenfield unit too. The investment for the project would be between Rs 200-300 crore.