ALSTOM and AnsaldoBreda have signed a strategic and industrial partnership for the production and marketing of single-deck high speed trains.
Announced on November 23, the agreement covers very high speed trains for operation at 300 km/h and above, including the AGV now under development (RG 12.05 p763), and 250 km/h stock meeting the European standards for interoperability. TGV Duplex is excluded from the agreement, but Pendolino trains and AnsaldoBreda’s rolling stock for HSL-Zuid are included.
Trainsets will be produced at Alstom’s Savigliano and Sesto plants in Italy and the Pistoia and Napoli works of AnsaldoBreda. The Alstom sites at La Rochelle, Le Creusot and Tarbes are also involved in this co-operation, with the first trains from the partnership to be ready for commissioning in early 2009.
’With this agreement AnsaldoBreda reinforces its presence in a high value market in strong expansion. It will also consolidate its business by exploiting the technological capabilities developed in more than 100 years of activities worldwide. This co-operation will also have an impact on the future development programmes of Italian railways’, said Giorgio Zappa, General Manager of AnsaldoBreda’s parent company Finmeccanica. n
