Maruti Suzuki today announced that it has transported more than 6 lakh cars through the Indian Railways in the past six years. Employing the rail mode, the Indo-Japanese car manufacturer counterbalanced around 3,000 Megatons(MT) of CO2 emissions, witnessing a CAGR of over 18 per cent. The carmaker is very bullish on using railways for transporting cars. The first despatch by double-decker flexi-deck rakes took place in March 2014. The operations started with the use of Indian Railway wagons which were converted from old passenger coaches.
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The carmaker is heavily relying on this mode of transport as it offers several benefits such as bulk despatches, reduction in traffic congestion, faster and safer, reliable mode of transport, reduction in CO2 emissions, conservation of fossil fuels and more.
Maruti Suzuki India despatched over 1.78 lakh cars through Indian Railways in the FY19-20
The company has come a long way from using a single deck converted rakes to deploying high speed, high capacity new design double deck rakes. These single deck wagons were christened as New Modified Goods (NMG) with a capacity to handle 125 cars. With growing volumes, Indian Railways' design arm RDSO designed high capacity dedicated wagons called BCACM after taking suggestions from several OEMs including Maruti Suzuki. The new BCACBM rakes are more flexible and offer a capacity of 318 cars.
Additionally, more than 100 million litres of precious fossil fuel was saved, as the company could avoid over 100,000 truck trips on the National Highways. In the financial year 2019-20, the company despatched over 1.78 lakh cars through Indian Railways, which is 15 per cent more as compared to the previous year. It also accounts for nearly 12 per cent of the total sales recorded by the carmaker in the year.
Indian Railways has helped the company offset nearly 3,000 MT of CO2 emissions
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Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director & CEO, Maruti Suzuki India said, "Considering the increasing volumes, our team felt the need for large scale logistics flow. We realised, that not only for expansion but also for risk mitigation we have to look beyond road mode logistics."
