Voestalpine Railway Systems Receives €237m Order for High-Speed 2 Rail Network in UK

Voestalpine Railway Systems Receives €237m Order for High-Speed 2 Rail Network in UK

(IN BRIEF) Austrian company, voestalpine Railway Systems, has secured its largest ever order worth around EUR 237 million for the design, supply, and servicing of turnouts, drives, and rail expansion joints including diagnostic systems for Great Britain’s new High Speed 2 rail network. The company will supply around 320 turnout systems plus drives, as well as rail expansion joints including diagnostic and monitoring software. Voestalpine Railway Systems is also supplying other major international orders in the Railway Systems sector, including Australia’s Sydney Trains, Egypt’s first high-speed line, and the Adriatic—Black Sea line. In the business year 2021/22, voestalpine Railway Systems generated revenue of EUR 1.5 billion at its 70 production and sales sites worldwide.

(PRESS RELEASE) LEOBEN, Austria, 9-Mar-2023 — /EuropaWire/ — Voestalpine AG (VIE: VOE), an Austria-based leading steel and technology group with a unique combination of materials and processing expertise, announces that voestalpine Railway Systems, a global leading supplier of complete railway systems, has announced that it has secured its largest ever order for the design, supply, and servicing of turnouts, drives, and rail expansion joints, including diagnostic systems for Great Britain’s new High Speed 2 rail network. The deal is worth around €237 million (approx. GBP 210 million) and is part of an overall order volume of around €600 million for voestalpine’s railway systems.

Great Britain’s new High Speed 2 (HS2) rail link, which is a high-speed rail link that extends almost 275 km in length and runs north-south, will have a transport capacity of up to 300,000 passengers a day. voestalpine Railway Systems will supply this high-tech line with around 320 turnout systems plus drives, as well as rail expansion joints including diagnostic and monitoring software which will continually record the condition of the infrastructure and report deviations in real time, ensuring that the highest safety standards are upheld and facilitate condition-based and predictive maintenance.

In addition to this project, voestalpine Railway Systems has secured major international orders in the railway systems sector worldwide. The company will supply turnouts and welded rails for Australia’s Sydney Trains over the next five years, with the contract worth over €220 million. It is also supplying Egypt’s first high-speed line (Green Line) with around 260 high-speed turnouts, with the order volume for this prestigious project amounting to €42.5 million. The company is producing a total of 3,000 tons of rails for the tram network in the capital Sarajevo, as part of an overall project volume of around €20 million.

voestalpine Railway Systems is a complete provider of fully digital rail tracks, offering everything from the “hardware” (rails, turnouts, mountings, and sleepers) through to the digital monitoring of rail tracks and trains from a single source. In the business year 2021/22, the company generated revenue of €1.5 billion at its 70 production and sales sites worldwide. Around 7,200 employees work in this segment, 1,500 of whom are based in Austria.

“This record-breaking order once again proves the value of our strategy and our global competence in this segment. The Railway Systems segment has performed extremely well for many years,” commented Herbert Eibensteiner, CEO of voestalpine AG.

“voestalpine Railway Systems are the global leading provider of system solutions for railway infrastructure. We supply rails, turnouts, mounting systems, and signaling technology from a single source, allowing us to offer our customers railway infrastructure solutions that meet their specific needs.” said Franz Kainersdorfer, Member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG and Head of the Metal Engineering Division.

Kainersdorfer envisions significant growth opportunities in the field of digitalization, which plays a crucial role in enhancing track availability.