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Industries-Arbel Fauvet Rail (popularly known as AFR), Kolkata-headquartered Titagarh Wagon Ltd (TWL), one of the country’s leading wagon makers, is now in advanced stage of negotiations with a Japanese engineering company to foray into road and rail bridges, flyovers, J P Chowdhary, Chairman of TWL, told newspersons here on Friday.

Chowdhary said, “After a somewhat long-drawn process we have narrowed down on this Japanese company. It may be a joint venture or a special purpose vehicle to get into this new segment. Hopefully everything will be crystallized within next two months.” He however refused to divulge the name of the Japanese company, which is a leading bridge manufacturing and structural engineering company.

“Eventually we will be floating a new company dealing with bailey bridges, which will be an associated company of TWL,” he explained.

He said that with the infrastructure boom in the country, the scope for such engineering works pertaining to steel bridges would be enormous. The company has enough space within its existing facilities to carry out these works and as a result the cost of fraying into this new segment would not be much, he said.

Titagarh Wagons has already teamed up with the Swiss railway coach and wagon maker Stadler for Chennai Metro project. The company also has a joint venture with FreightCar America Inc, leading maker of aluminum railcar, for rolling out country’s first aluminum wagon. In the joint venture company for manufacturing aluminum coaches, the Chicago-based company has 51 per cent stakes while Chowdhary’s company has 49 per cent equity.

Umesh Chowdhary, Vice Chairman, TWL said that the initial investment in aluminium wagon project would be to the tune $30 mn. The company is hopeful of getting sufficient order from railways in this regard, he said.

He said that the modified wagon scheme which is already on the railway ministry’s site would hopefully become a policy within next 2/3 months and that would eventually benefit wagon makers like TWL. “Railways have been experiencing huge wagon shortage. Every year 30-40 per cent of railways’ wagon procurement target is unmet. We see great opportunity on the wagon front also,” he said.

TWL at present has a capacity of manufacturing 5000 wagons. Besides, Cimmco Birla (now co-promoted by S K Birla Group and the Chowdharys of TWL) also has a capacity of 5000 wagons. In year before last, TWL manufactured 3700 wagons, last year production dropped to around 2700. This year the company is expecting the figure to go up again. “As soon as orders start coming in, Cimmco Birla will start production,” Chowdhary said.