Title - Besco plans to spend more on wagons

Baruipur (Calcutta) : Besco Ltd (foundry division), the city-based manufacturer of railway rolling stock and components, will look to invest an additional Rs 200 crore at its Baruipur plant to increase the production of wagons to about 5,000 units by 2015.The foundry division of Besco, which primarily makes railway components, recently set up a wagon manufacturing facility at its 14-acre factory in Baruipur.The company has already invested Rs 120 crore in a manufacturing line of 3,000 wagons per annum. The company has a 25,000-kilo-tonne per year foundry unit in the same plant.“There is a demand for about 30,000 wagons per year and with the dedicated freight corridor coming up, we perceive a tremendous growth opportunity,” Siddharth Tantia, director of Besco Ltd (foundry division), told The Telegraph.The company would initially look to supply about 500 wagons to the railways. Depending on the order, the company will expand capacity.A. K Tantia, chief of Besco foundry division, said Baruipur was the first unit to follow the G 105 standard of wagon manufacturing prescribed by the Research Design and Standards Organisation of the railway ministry.State industries minister Partha Chatterjee, who formally inaugurated the wagon unit today, said, “Majority of the wagon requirements of the Indian Railways are produced within the state and being labour intensive, this sector also presents employment opportunities.”Chatterjee also said he would try to facilitate more orders if the company was able to produce the right quantity at a competitive price.He, however, added that there must be lesser friction between workers and the management for the unit to progress.Earlier this week, Chatterjee had inaugurated the ceramic tile manufacturing unit of H&R Johnson at Panagarh industrial park (Durgapur) and a LED light unit of city-based Jagwani Projects in Howrah. The cumulative investment in these two projects is around 500 crore.