Production of Rail Neer up at Railways Ambernath plant

Production of Rail Neer up at Railways Ambernath plant

Ambernath: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation officials are confident that with their recent efforts to increase the production levels of its Rail Neer plant in Ambernath, the numbers game of supplying Packaged Drinking Water(PDW) to Mumbai’s railway network is looking good.

IRCTC’s director of catering service RN Kalita said that with the Ambernath Rail Neer plant now producing 15,000 cartons of 12 bottles each, which adds to 1.8 lakh litres of water per day, the situation for Mumbai is healthy.IRCTC has been turning up production of Rail Neer at Ambernath in a phased manner from about 10,000 cartons in mid-October to current levels of 15,000 cartons.

As per the current rules of the railways, stalls on Central and Western Railways will have to absorb the full supply of 1.8 lakh bottles of Rail Neer every day, and opt for private PDW firms for demand above this level. Some stations (called mandated stations) will have to use only Rail Neer. These mandated stations include Churchgate, Marine Lines, Grant Road, Dadar, Bandra Terminus, Bandra, Kandivli and Borivli.

The IRCTC officialdom is now buoyed by the recent verdict of the Bombay High Court, which dismissed the plea of the Indian Railway Caterers Association that had moved court against the railway’s circulars on the pre-eminence of Rail Neer over other PDW brands on the railway network.

As highlighted in October, the IRCTC is betting big on its PDW business. The railways own estimate of packaged water bottles on the railway network is around 25 lakh per day. Of this, IRCTC with its four bottling plants has a capacity of 6.14 lakh bottles per day. In fact, for the current financial year 2015-16, the IRCTC has set a target to produce 16 crore bottles with a turnover of Rs.120 crore. In 2014-15, Rail Neer plants produced 11.8 crore bottles with a turnover of Rs96 crore. In 2013-14, the numbers were 10.45 crore bottles and Rs.88.17 crore revenue.