BENGALURU: As it stepped into its 37th year on Tuesday, the Yelahanka-based Rail Wheel Factory has one more achievement it can boast of - it has slashed the manufacturing cost of its wheels by 13%, making its products cheaper than Chinese ones in the international market.Inaugurated by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on September 15, 1984, work on the factory’s sprawling campus is underway at full capacity - manufacturing 671 wheels and 281 axles everyday - even though the pandemic has ravaged the profit margins of businesses across industries.
General Manager Rajiv Kumar Vyas said the RWF makes two types of wheels, one for the regular train (BOXN) and another for the container wagon (BLC). “The cost of a BOXN wheel sold by RWF to a non-railway customer now is Rs 1,86,936 compared to China’s Rs 2,20,431 per wheel. The cost of a BLC wheel is Rs 1,68,000 as compared to Rs 1,76,453 for a China one,” he said.
The RWF registered the feat in the January-March 2020 quarter with stringent cost-cutting and setting up a sand reclamation plant to manufacture its own sand, which is crucial to manufacture wheels. “It is highly environment-friendly in that we recycle our used sand. After the mould for a wheel is readied, sand is applied before hot metal is poured on it to cast the wheel. So far, 1,250 Metric Tonnes have been made here. It helped us save the cost of procuring it from Andhra Pradesh,” he said.
An additional 5,000 metric tonnes of sand already used by its factories remains. “We will now be able to meet 90 percent of our sand requirement,” he said. “It is an achievement that we were able to sustain cheaper prices for the five months from the beginning of this financial year,” Vyas said. A new Axle Forging Complex is being set up a cost of Rs 329 crore and slated to be completed by 2021.