ITE Management has agreed to acquire SMBC Rail Services from Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, with SMBC RS assets including more than 50 000 wagons to be transferred to ITE’s American Industrial Transport business. The transaction announced on November 7 is subject to customary conditions including regulatory approvals.
Stadler has opened a 17 700 m2 logistics centre at its Pankow factory, completing a €95m programme launched in 2019 to expand the Berlin site. The logistics centre houses storage and pre-assembly facilities as well as 220 office workplaces. The general contractor was S&V, and the project was supported by the Land of Berlin.
Škoda Group has formed a strategic partnership with Speno International to install ETCS on 15 track maintenance vehicles of five types and obtain approval in 16 countries. ‘With the acquisition of The Signalling Company earlier this year, we have expanded our portfolio to include ETCS technology and the expertise required for seamless integration into the vehicles’, said Jan Christoph Harder, Škoda Group President Region West & North, on November 6. ‘As Europe transitions to a unified system, we stand ready to leverage our knowledge and experience to contribute to this important evolution.’
Alstom has opened a 277 m2 Digital Mobility Lab in Bangkok, which will work on signalling technologies and system integration for global projects. Alstom’s Global Engineering Centre in Thailand now has over 2000 m2 of lab space and more than 1 000 staff, including 700 dedicated engineers.
Ticket retailer Trainline’s B2B arm Trainline Partner Solutions has announced an agreement to provide multi-national rail content for Sabre’s travel agent platform, starting with Trenitalia, Italo, SBB and Deutsche Bahn tickets. Content will be available exclusively outside the train operator’s home markets.
Alstom is investing €50m to establish a 30 000 m2 depot site in București where it will work with local rolling stock repair company Atelierele CFR Grivita to maintain 37 Coradia Stream EMUs ordered by railway reform authority ARF in 2022. This will include significant modernisation of existing facilities and construction of new ones including an underfloor wheel lathe. The initial phase is scheduled to be ready by the end of January 2024, with full completion in H2 2024.
On November 6 Wabtec released its 2023 Sustainability Report, which for the first time discloses its complete Scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions from sources not owned or controlled by the company but related to its activities.
