Turkey’s Minister of Transport & Infrastructure Mehmet Cahit Turhan officially opened an aluminium bodyshell production facility at the Tüvasaş factory in Adapazarı on June 19.

Technology company S&T has agreed to acquire Kapsch Group’s Kapsch CarrierCom and Kapsch PublicTransportCom businesses, subject to regulatory approval, for a price ‘in the low double digits of millions of euros.’ S&T executive board Chairman Hannes Niederhauser said Kapsch CarrierCom had ‘successfully transformed itself from a provider of customer-specific hardware products into a supplier of hardware-independent software’, and the technologies being acquired would ‘ideally complement’ those in its Kontron portfolio.

Bombardier Transportation announced on June 14 that it would open an assembly plant in Pittsburg, California, with production of Fleet of the Future metro cars for San Francisco’s BART to be transferred from Plattsburgh, New York, ‘over the coming months’. This would free up capacity for ‘new and upcoming east coast orders’, and also enable Bombardier to pursue additional business opportunities on the west coast.

Czech open access operator RegioJet has raised KC921m though an issue of five-year bonds to be traded on the Praha stock exchange. It is to use the proceeds to refinance existing loans and for the further development of its fleet, with plans to buy or modernise around 100 coaches. ‘The RegioJet bond issuance offered an attractive investment opportunity for domestic institutional and private investors’, said Tomáš Černý, director of debt and equity markets at Ceska Sporitelna, which acted as issue manager and hedging and paying agent.

Frauscher Sensor Technology India has moved to a larger building in Mysuru. ‘Ever since Frauscher made its debut in India in 2013, we have been growing stronger year on year’, said Alok Sinha, Managing Director of Frauscher India. ‘Thanks to the strengths that we have developed, we have even extended our coverage to customers outside the country’s borders. Moving our production unit into a new and more modern building will support us in realising their projects together within stipulated time frames. Furthermore, it is another contribution of Frauscher to the Make in India initiative.’

KfW IPEX-Bank is providing Norway’s state-owned railway property company Bane NOR Eiendom with a NKr500m, 10-year loan to part-finance a NKr2bn programme of investment in depots and maintenance facilities by 2025. This is focused on making better use of capacity and improving environmental performance.

Rail, agricultural and industrial equipment coating company BS Supplies has rebranded as Beyond Surface Solutions.

An agreement has been reached for GoMedia’s onboard infotainment platform to be integrated into Advantech’s rail-certified ARK 2250R embedded box PC. ‘Advantech becomes the latest hardware partner for GoMedia, meaning that passengers will experience the same onboard infotainment no matter which operator they are travelling with’, said Roger Matthews, Managing Director of GoMedia.

Dutch Analytics BV (Netherlands), Elcowire Rail (Germany), IVM (Italy), Konux (Germany), Leonardo (Italy), RideOnTrack (Belgium), STIMIO (France), Triorail Bahnfunk (Germany) and Wenzel Elektronik (Germany) have joined European railway supply industry association UNIFE.