Speaking on the occasion of the announcement, Umesh Chowdhary, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Titagarh Wagons Limited said, "The acquisition of Firema's business will greatly complement Titagarh's growth strategy and will add significant value to Titagarh's existing business as well.
While we have been making conventional EMUs for the Indian Railways, Firema has state of the art trains with IGBT based 3 phase technology. Moreover, they have both Stainless steel and Aluminium car body technology which is going to open the world markets for the Group. We were a global player in goods wagons, and with this acquisition, we will be a global player in passenger trains as well."
Chowdhary further said "Besides the increase of Euro 220 million to our Group order book of INR 878 Crore as of March 31, 2015, this acquisition makes TWL the first Indian company to posses high technology for manufacture of all three types of rolling stock i.e. carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminium.
There is a surge in the world demand for rail transportation infrastructure and our Group with cost effective manufacturing in India and high technology in Europe will have a unique presence in both freight and passenger trains to cater to global market.
We have already started booking orders for freight wagons with the help of our subsidiary in France for Africa and we will repeat the same strategy for the acquisition in Italy.
Of course Indian market for both metro and passenger coaches is extremely exciting and we are going to enter these segments in a very definitive way."
Firema has been an established player in the manufacturing of metro coaches, semi/ high speed trains with speed of up to 160 km per hour, propulsion systems for trains such as traction motors, and converters in Italy.
Continued to the next page