This week’s news from the global railway supply chain.
Hitachi Rail is to open a C$30m Canadian headquarters at Consilium Place in Toronto’s Scarborough district in summer 2026. This will be the base for 1 100 employees and 100 paid interns, and will house its Global Communications-Based Train Control Competence Centre, building on the company’s 2024 announcement of a C$100m investment to develop SelTrac G9. ‘Our new state-of-the-art office will attract the next generation of new tech talent to Hitachi Rail’, said Arnaud Besse, Chief Operating Officer, Hitachi Rail Canada, on February 19. ’It will also be the hub for the next generation signalling technology that will increase capacity, improve reliability and reduce costs for transit systems around the world’
Eurofima is providing Montenegro’s national railway ZPCG with €6·5m of financing for rolling stock modernisation and refurbishment projects. Eurofima said an ‘innovative insurance solution was developed with a renowned insurance company’, enabling the full project volume to be reflected within the financing transaction to enhance the project’s risk-bearing capacity and the pricing towards the customer.
Agreement has been reached for the 140 employees of the Loxia joint venture of Movares and Arcadis which provides software and data services to ProRail to transfer to the Dutch infrastructure manager on January 1 2027. ProRail said the services which Loxia has provided since 2007 are particularly important for train safety and control, and it wants to bring the work in-house when the current contract expires at the end of 2026.
Pandrol has worked with several companies including SouthPole to analyse the Production Carbon Footprint of its PLA and PLA Evo aluminothermic welding processes, with the results validated by Bureau Veritas. The PCF assessment provided Pandrol with a detailed breakdown of the carbon impact, allowing it to identify components and processes with the highest environmental impact. Pandrol can utilise this information to extrapolate the footprints of its other processes and reduce its carbon footprint; it has already taken actions including the installation of solar panels, more efficient processes and active engagement with suppliers.
The Swiss government is pay for the delivery of 1·04 million sets of rail fastenings and 4 000 sets of section insulators to Ukraine under two memoranda of understanding signed with Ukrainian Railways, the Ukrainian government, Arthur Flury and Schwihag.
Kazakhstan-based railway construction company Temirzhol Zhondeu has signed an agreement to be the official distributor for railway equipment from China’s Hubei Srida Heavy-duty Engineering Machinery in the Eurasian Economic Union.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev has announced that two prototype Bely Krechet trainsets developed domestically for the Moskva – St Petersburg high speed line project are to be tested between Zelenograd and Tver in 2027. Welding of the bodies for the first two cars has been completed at Sinara Transport Machines’ Ural Locomotives plant near Yekaterinburg, and it is envisaged that 28 high speed trains will be in service by the end of 2028 and 43 by 2030.