Titagarh Wagons enters into strategic alliance with ABB India

Titagarh Wagons, which has transformed itself from a wagon maker for Indian Railways to a multinational diversified engineering and fabrication group, has entered into an exclusive cooperation agreement with engineering company ABB India, to address the growing business of propulsion equipment (traction converters) for the Indian railway EMU/MEMU market.

As per the agreement, Titagarh and ABB will jointly design, develop and manufacture state of the art IGBT based propulsion systems for EMU/MEMU which will be manufactured in Titagarh’s plant at Uttarpara in Kolkata, with certain components being supplied by ABB.

This agreement goes into effect immediately and is expected to start generating revenue in less than two-years, said a press statement issued by the company.

Kolkata based Titagarh Wagons has manufactured and supplied more than 300 EMU/MEMU coaches to the Indian Railways. Currently, the company is busy executing an order of 102 metro coaches for Pune Metro requisitioned by the Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation.

The company's wholly owned Italian subsidiary Titagarh Firema SpA has technical and manufacturing expertise to design and produce world class train sets and metro coaches as well as propulsion equipment required for these trains. The subsidiary has orders to manufacture 50 plus trains to different Italian cities and regions.

"Titagarh, in cooperation with its Italian subsidiary, has a developmental order for propulsion systems required in the EMU/MEMU trains (local and suburban trains of Indian Railways). The cooperation agreement signed with ABB will support the execution of the above orders and also give an edge to Titagarh to establish itself in the field of power electronics," the release stated.

Elaborating on the agreement, Titagarh Wagons VC & MD Umesh Chowdhary said: “While our Italian subsidiary has been an established player in this field for the European systems, the agreement with ABB India for EMU/MEMU propulsion will help us to expedite and strengthen our presence in the Indian propulsion market which follows a 25 kV AC system."

Titagarh’s expansion into the propulsion business is the group's endeavour to make the Make-in-India and Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan initiative of the Government of India successful, he added. The group is on its way to re-establish normal levels of operations post lockdown for COVID-19.

ABB India intends to produce compact and light traction technology that improves locomotive’s energy efficiency, operational performance, and space for better passenger comfort at their equipment manufacturing unit in Nelamangala near Bengaluru, said it's MD Sanjeev Sharma.