Alstom on Thursday flagged off the delivery of the last of the 22 Metropolis trains made for Sydney Metro that were entirely designed and manufactured at the company’s plant at Sri City, Andhra Pradesh.

“This is a very important milestone for us because the Sydney Metro project was the first international project fully delivered from India,” said Ling Fang, SVP, Alstom South Asia.

Alstom had won a contract in 2014 to deliver 22 six-car train sets and a Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) signalling system for NorthWest Rail Link, Australia’s biggest public transport project and a fully-automated metro network.

Also today, the company’s last train for Chennai Metro Rail was flagged off.

“These achievements prove that our strategy to make India an international hub for engineering and manufacturing is justified,” said Fang.

The metro rail manufacturer will commence work on its second export order — for Montreal’s light metro project — in early 2019. On the domestic side, Alstom will begin production of railcars for the third line of Mumbai Metro in the second half of 2019, with an order size of €320 million.

Montreal metro project

“Production for Montreal and Mumbai Metro will begin in October and November 2019, and the first train will be delivered in 2020,” said Alain Spohr, MD, India and South Asia, Alstom.

The Sri City facility, which began operations in 2014, currently has the capacity to produce 240 railcars annually, and has delivered cars to Chennai, Kochi and Lucknow metro rail projects.

“Today we are operating at 16-18 cars a month against a capacity of 20 cars, and plan to increase our capacity to 22 cars per month,” Spohr added.