Germany, India: Siemens Mobility and Titagarh Rail Systems (TRSL) have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly explore metro train supply opportunities in markets outside both companies’ home turf. The agreement is meant to both strengthen TRSL’s position in the domestic market and help the company expand beyond India.
Partnership in India
The two companies are already working together. This year, for example, Siemens Mobility landed an order from TRSL to supply traction and auxiliary converters, motors and the TCMS control system for 12 metro trains destined for Pune. TRSL described the deal as another step towards full localisation of metro rolling stock production, alongside its move into building aluminium carbodies.
Siemens Mobility itself has no track record yet supplying metro trains to the Indian market; its contracts there have so far been limited to signalling, automatic train operation and power supply systems. It has, however, been running a tram bogie plant in Aurangabad since 2022, which it plans to use as the base for localising metro train assembly. Last spring the German company signed a similar memorandum with India’s BEML.
Metro train with aluminium carbodies from Titagarh for the Pune metro. Source: Zee News
TRSL, meanwhile, is working on several metro train contracts in India and is building up its manufacturing capabilities, including through the aluminium-carbody project already mentioned. It recently opened a new engineering centre at its Uttarpara site to strengthen its in-house rolling stock design work, and has said it wants to break into the global rail market.
Global partnership
Siemens Mobility’s share of the metro train market trails well behind France’s Alstom and China’s CRRC, with plenty of orders elsewhere going to Switzerland’s Stadler and Spain’s CAF. Siemens has traditionally kept a small number of metro contracts in its portfolio, but the ones it does have tend to be large, such as its orders in London, Vienna and Riyadh.
TRSL doesn’t have any metro export orders either, though it did pick up international experience previously through its ownership of Italy’s Firema plant.
No details of the planned partnership have emerged yet, but it could end up looking like the production arrangement Siemens Mobility has had with Turkey’s Bozankaya since the mid-2010s, under which Bozankaya’s plant near Ankara assembles metro trains for Bangkok using components supplied by Siemens Mobility.
