CAF has deployed Dassault Systèmes’ 3DExperience platform to provide a single source of information and virtual twins. It ‘transforms our design and engineering internally and how we access product definition outside of engineering’, said Sergio Heras, PLM Director at CAF. ‘We’ve already started our first projects fully developed on the platform, rolling stock equipped with cutting-edge technology that will be used by commuters in Asia.’
Leasing company Railpool has secured a €1·07bn financing structure comprising in equal parts of the refinancing of existing loans through European private placements with various institutional investors with maturities of 12 and 20 years, and a new credit line provided by banks to facilitate finance new rolling stock and provide working capital. Crédit Agricole CIB acted as sole debt advisor as well as sole green advisor and sole placement agent, and KfW IPEX-Bank acted as facility agent, security agent, paying agent and investor representative. Eight other institutions were involved in the bank financing. Legal advice was provided by CMS Hasche Sigle for Railpool and Watson Farley & Williams for the investors.
Rail cybersecurity company Cylus has appointed Sandeep Joshi to its advisory board. He was previously Managing Director of Alstom’s Transport Information Solutions Lab in India.
Indian law firm KLA Legal has joined the Rail Working Group, which represents the rail industry regarding the adoption and implementation of the 2007 Luxembourg Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment.
Dr Michael Reiter, previously Head of Robel’s R&D Hub, has been appointed as Managing Director of the Robel Rail Automation subsidiary which has been formed to develop technology for the automation of track construction and maintenance. ‘Working on the track is hard’, he said. ‘By developing sustainable, safe and comprehensible worksite processes, we will contribute to better working conditions and reproducible results and thus strengthen the railway system in the long term.’
BlackBerry has announced that its QNX OS for Safety 2·2 will be certified to the Safety Integrity Level 4. ‘Rail manufacturers and suppliers know they can trust BlackBerry QNX to provide the software building blocks for their robust, safe and secure embedded systems’, said Vice-President of Products & Strategy Grant Courville.
Etihad Rail signed memoranda of understanding covering the exchange knowledge, expertise and best practices in freight and passenger rail services and operations with Spain’s RENFE and the UK’s HS1 Ltd and GB Railfreight at the Middle East Rail 2022 event in Abu Dhabi.
On May 11 Eurofima issued a three-year US$500m RegS benchmark due May 16 2025. Over 31 investors participated in the offering with central banks and official institutions representing 93% of the demand, followed by asset managers at 5%, insurance funds at 1% and banks at 1%. Regional investor distribution was diverse, with 34% of the transaction going to Asia, 29% to Europe, 20% to the Middle East & Africa and 16% to the Americas.
The US Railway Supply Institute has named Director of Regulatory & Industry Affairs Lee Verhey as Executive Director of the RSI Committee on Tank Cars from May 23, succeeding retiring Vice-Chair John Byrne who has led the committee since 2016. Before joining RSI in 2020 Verhey was Senior Vice-President of Quality at TrinityRail.