OREANDA-NEWS. Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation has announced that it has received an order for 126,000 tons of heat-treated rails for the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (Western DFC) connecting Delhi and Mumbai in India. NSSMC began shipping rails to India in June 2014.

The Western DFC project, a national project of India, will construct a dedicated freight corridor at a total length of 1,500 km between Delhi (the capital city) and Mumbai (a commercial hub). The project is also the backbone of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project, which the Indian and Japanese governments have been promoting. The first section of the construction project is approximately 626 km in length and extends between Rewari, Haryana (in northern India) and Iqbalgadh, Gujarat (in the west).

Sojitz Corporation and Larsen & Toubro Ltd. in India received a contract (Japanese ODA loan project) in the spring of 2013 from the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), a Special Purpose Vehicle under the Ministry of Railways in India, to construct railway tracks for the section. This time, NSSMC has received the order for the heat-treated rails used in the section. The construction work began in summer 2013 and is planned for completion in summer 2017. NSSMC will deliver all the rails by summer 2016.

NSSMC has been proposing specifications for heat-treated rails to the DFCCIL during the early stages of the Japanese ODA loan project. NSSMC rails are highly resistant to wear, which allows them to contribute to extending service life. In addition, the dimensional tolerance of NSSMC rails is highly accurate, and workability is excellent when performing welding and laying. The superior quality of NSSMC rails is deemed to be of a very high value, thus contributing to receiving the order.

NSSMC will endeavor to capture business opportunities overseas, where demand will further increase in the future, and will put energy into infrastructure construction in emerging countries.