Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest carmaker, said on Friday that it became the first carmaker in the country to dispatch vehicles to the Kashmir valley by rail, after the first consignment of over 100 vehicles reached the Anantnag terminal from the company’s manufacturing facility in Manesar, where the trains were loaded from the newly inaugurated in-plant railway siding.

The first consignment of Maruti Suzuki—which included cars like the Brezza, Dzire, WagonR and S-Presso among others—travelled a distance of 850 kilometres to reach the Anantnag terminal, which was recently thrown open to the public. En route to Anantnag, the train crossed the world’s highest railway arch bridge over the Chenab River. The bridge was inaugurated earlier this year as part of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project, which aims to strengthen regional connectivity and enhance logistics efficiency.

“In recent times, apples from the valley have been transported using the Jammu & Kashmir rail link. Now, Maruti Suzuki cars will be transported to the Kashmir Valley by rail. Jammu-Srinagar railway line is a game changer for the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister of Railways, Information and Broadcasting, Electronics & Information Technology, in a statement.

“Railway dispatches are central to our logistics strategy,” said Hisashi Takeuchi, MD, and CEO, Maruti Suzuki India Limited, in a statement. “Aligned with PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, Maruti Suzuki operates two in-plant railway sidings, inside its Manesar and Gujarat manufacturing plants. These enable vehicle movement directly from the company’s production facilities to different parts of the country,” he added.

In June, India’s largest carmaker by volume inaugurated the country’s largest automobile in-plant railway siding at its Manesar plant as it looks to expand its logistics capacity. The Manesar railway siding, registered under the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, will have a dispatch capability of 450,000 vehicles at full capacity. The Manesar siding has been developed as part of the 126-kilometre Haryana Orbital Rail Corridor (HORC), which runs from Sonipat to Palwal in the state of Haryana. 

“Ten years ago, the rail penetration of car dispatches from the factory to our dealers or to the export ports was about 5%. We have been able to increase that to 24.5% last year. That translates to 5.2 lakh car dispatches. We want to keep increasing it further, and hope that by 2030, 35% of our dispatches happen by railways,” Rahul Bharti, senior executive officer, corporate affairs, told Fortune India in June.

Maruti Suzuki was the first automobile company to obtain an Automobile Freight Train Operator (AFTO) license, back in 2013. Since FY 2014-15, it has dispatched over 26 lakh vehicles using Indian Railways.