08 November 2021

Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. received an order from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and shipped an assortment of cables (an approximate total of 2,800 km) for the Red Line Construction Project, a plan involving the building of a new commuter railway route in the Kingdom of Thailand.

In the Kingdom of Thailand, the government is promoting the Bangkok Mass Transit System Project to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air pollution, and respond to increasing transportation demand in the Bangkok metropolitan area.

The Red Line Construction Project is part of this project and features the building of an all-elevated railway line starting from Bang Sue Station in the center of Bangkok, extending 26.4 kilometers north (North Line) and 14.6 kilometers west (West Line). The North Line was constructed using a Japanese government fund while The West Line was constructed by the Thai government. The entire line started operation in August 2021.

The Sumitomo Electric Group's strength is that it can collectively provide a variety of products indispensable for railway construction, ranging from contact wires that supply power to railway vehicles through pantographs to power cables and signal cables.

In this project, Sumitomo Electric was awarded for the supply of a wide range of products by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, who was in charge of designing and procuring the project’s electric and communication systems. Variety of the product types, including contact wires, stranded hard-drawn copper wires, power cables (Low Voltage and Medium Voltage), and other various cables, delivered to this project was the widest among railway construction projects it has ever participated in.

Since it began manufacturing and selling contact wires in 1914, the Sumitomo Electric Group has been providing products and services that are indispensable for the railway network construction business around the world for more than 100 years. Railway infrastructure development projects are thriving in Asian countries in particular to deal with growing traffic demand, economic activities expanding in wider areas, increasing environmental impact, global warming, and so on. Such projects are expected to further increase in the future. The Group has been providing products and services to various projects. As an example, the ongoing delivery of contact wires to the Dedicated Freight Corridor Project in India is the largest ever order volume received by the Company. The Sumitomo Electric Group will continue to contribute to the construction of high-quality infrastructure with a wide range of products and services, making use of the experience it has accumulated so far.