Ukrzaliznytsia, in addition to France’s Alstom and China’s CRRC, is negotiating the supply of electric locomotives with Canada’s Bombardier, Anton Sabolevsky, the director for strategic development and investment policy of the company, has said in an interview with the Magistral industry portal. “Now Ukrzaliznytsia is actively negotiating with potential partners. The main contenders are Alstom, CRRC, and Bombardier. The main advantage of these manufacturers is that they have ready-made models of locomotives for the 1,520 mm gauge, the rest require quite a long time for such models to be developed,” he said.
According to the expert, ultimately, the main selection criterion will be the total cost of an electric locomotive, taking into account its operation life, which includes the initial price of the locomotive, the cost of its maintenance, and the conditions of financing the project, as well as the volume of production localization in Ukraine.
He also said that Ukrzaliznytsia could purchase shunting locomotives from the Japanese company Toshiba.
Canada’s Bombardier Transportation, the manufacturer of railway solutions, is ready to take part in a tender to supply electric locomotives for JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan has written on his Facebook page. “Everyone is waiting for the tender of Ukrzaliznytsia, in which not only Alstom, but also Bombardier and Chinese companies are ready to take part. Given the complete deterioration of Ukrainian locomotives, there is no place to delay further,” he said, summing up his visit to France last week.
Earlier in Ukrzaliznytsia said that Alstom and CRRC, Siemens and Skoda showed their interest in this project.
As reported, in November, the International locomotive building conglomerate Skoda Transportation opened the first official representative office in Ukraine in Dnipro.
GE Transportation and Kriukov Car Building Works in early June 2018 signed an agreement to localize the production of 30 TE33A Evolution series locomotives. Ukrzaliznytsia received the first diesel locomotives at the end of 2018.
The framework agreement between Ukrzaliznytsia and GE, signed early 2018, provides for 15 year partnership in upgrade and modernization of traction fleet, the first stage of which is supply of 30 new diesel TE33AC locomotives to Ukrzaliznytsia in leasing with 10% localization level.
