EUROPE: Pesa has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of German tram manufacturer HeiterBlick, as part of the Polish rolling stock manufacturer’s ambitions for growth backed by the national Team Poland strategy.
HeiterBlick has its origins in Leipzig transport operator LVB’s main workshop. It was established as Leoliner Fahrzeugbau Leipzig in 2004 to build low-cost trams, and LVB sold a 51% stake in 2006 and 49% in 2011. It adopted the HeiterBlick name in 2007.
It has supplied customised light rail vehicles to Bielefeld, Hannover, Halberstadt, Dortmund and Würzburg, and it is currently implementing projects in Leipzig, Würzburg and Dortmund.
However, the company’s supply chain was hit by the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine, leading to higher costs and project delays which made it difficult to generate sufficient liquidity from long-term contracts, some of which date back to before the crises.
In 2025 it applied for ‘self-administration’ as part of a plan to restructure with advice from external experts from management consultancy Falkensteg and law firm Baker Tilly.
The agreement was Pesa was signed in late December, and the transaction is expected to be completed in Q1 2026.
‘HeiterBlick has a promising business model and a solid order book’, its Managing Director Samuel Kermelk said on January 9. ‘We leveraged the restructuring to overcome initial challenges. Over the past few months, we have been working hard on this with our business partners and clients, as well as our banks.’
‘We believe that Pesa and HeiterBlick complement each other perfectly – the merger provides synergy of competencies and the mutual integration of the experiences of both teams, which is crucial for strengthening our position in Europe’, said Krzysztof Zdziarski, President of the management board of Pesa Bydgoszcz which has supplied almost 1 000 trams to more than 20 European cities including Kyiv, Sofia and Tallinn and 12 of the 14 Polish metropolitan areas.
Team Poland backing
Polish state-owned development fund PFR, which is the majority owner of Pesa, said the acquisition of HeiterBlick is being carried out in the spirit of the Team Poland initiative for the international expansion of Polish businesses.
In December, Pesa signed a strategic financing agreement worth up to 6·8bn złoty with a consortium of over 20 Polish and foreign financial institutions including state-owned development bank BGK and export credit insurer KUKE. This will allow it to double the production capacity in its factories to handle a record order book worth over 15bn złoty, and enable further foreign expansion including acquisitions such HeiterBlick.
Poland’s Minister of Finance & Economy Andrzej Domański said ‘the acquisition of the German company by the Polish manufacturer perfectly reflects the operation of the Team Poland initiative – a modern model of cooperation between the state and business, which allows our companies to conquer key markets and build the position of leaders in their industries’.
He said the transaction was ‘an excellent example of economic diplomacy in practice — it shows that by playing as a team, as Team Poland, we can act on a European scale’.
