Maruti Suzuki offsets 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions by transporting cars via rail mode

New Delhi: Maruti Suzuki transported more than 6.7 lakh cars through the Indian Railways in the past six years, witnessing a compound annual growth rate of over 18 per cent and helping the country’s largest passenger car maker offset nearly 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

The first dispatch by double-decker flexi-deck rakes took place in March 2014.

The increased focus on using railways has helped the company offset nearly 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, said Maruti Suzuki. In addition, over 100 million litres of precious fossil fuel was saved as the company could avoid over one lakh truck trips on national highways.

In FY 2019-20, over 1.78 lakh cars were dispatched by rail mode, a 15 per cent increase over the previous year. This accounts for nearly 12 per cent of total sales in the year.

“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,” said Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki India.

Maruti Suzuki is the first auto manufacturer in the country to obtain automobile freight train operator licence. This allows private firms to fabricate and operate high speed, high capacity autowagon rakes on the Indian Railway’s network.

At present, Maruti Suzuki utilises five loading terminals (Gurgaon, Farukhnagar, Kathuwas, Patli and Detroj) and 13 destination terminals (Bengaluru, Nagpur, Mumbai, Guwahati, Mundra Port, Indore, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, NCR, Siliguri and Agartala).

With the addition of Agartala, the reach of rail mode has now been extended to far North East. It has helped to reduce the transportation time to these states by nearly half. (ANI)