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Alstom sees SA as regional ‘springboard’ as it targets growing maintenance market

4th July 2014

By: Tracy Hancock

Creamer Media Contributing Editor

  

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French multinational Alstom’s transport services unit says the services market is becoming progressively more accessible to private companies, with Alstom Transport growing 10% year-on-year and aiming to be the reference for railway services in the global market, which is currently worth more than €100-billion.

Speaking at a recent media event in Stockholm, Sweden, Alstom Transport Europe services VP David Briggs said the services unit would also demand zero safety compromise and aimed to be the worldwide reference for availability and reliability.

Alstom Transport MD: Nordic countries Henrik Anderberg added that the global market was driven by urban and regional development with “more and more governments putting money on the table”.

“While, historically, public transport operators, especially rail operators, covered everything from train manufacturing to operation and main-tenance, today’s [industry] drivers have pushed operators to focus on their core activity and outsource maintenance,” the company points out, adding that cost efficiency is one of these drivers.

“With maintenance accounting for 32% of the total cost of ownership of a typical national operator, more and more operators are thinking about the total cost of ownership of their products, associating maintenance with the purchase of rolling stock and infrastructure,” Alstom further reveals.

Passenger demand for a new kind of transport experience and extended operating hours is the second driver with regard to changing traditional operating times and maintenance.

A third driver accompanying this introduction of new rolling stock fleets sees operators under-taking employee skills adaptation internally.

Alstom has been a maintenance and services provider for more than 25 years. The transport services unit is currently generating yearly sales of €1.1-billion, covers 120 sites worldwide and has secured maintenance contracts averaging 15 years.

According to the latest UNIFE – the Associa-tion of the European Rail Industry – World Rail Market Study, which provides an outlook for the global rail market from 2012 to 2017, the strongest growth for railway services is emerging from the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – or Brics – group of countries.

“Alstom has already won maintenance contracts coupled with roll-ing stock supply [in these growing markets]. Public transport authorities in these regions are interested in benefiting from the recognised know-how of a train builder both in terms of manufacturing and maintenance,” states Alstom.

Alstom explains that maintenance accounts for 60% of its total service sales, with the UNIFE noting that rolling stock and infrastructure maintenance are one of the fastest-growing segments, at 3.1% a year by 2017.

Prasa Contract
In South Africa, Alstom is expected to start delivering the first 20 of 600 X’Trapolis metric gauge (Mega) trains in the fourth quarter of 2015. The trains form part of the R51-billion, or €4-billion, contract the Gibela Rail Transport Consortium, in which Alstom has a 61% share, signed with State-owned Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) for the delivery of the new rolling stock between 2015 and 2025. The price tag is subject to inflation and foreign exchange adjustments based on the euro:rand fluctuation.

The contract, the largest ever in Alstom’s history, includes the construction of a local manu-facturing facility in Dunnottar, 10 km north of the town of Nigel, as well as an 18-year service contract for technical support and the supply of spare parts.

“Most customers want product bundled with services,” said Anderberg.

He added that a high level of flexibility was essential to meeting the requirements of various customer profiles, which included the need for local content, explaining that Alstom’s strategy included developing products with local teams that understood the prevailing national culture.

The first 20 trains will be manufactured at the Alstom Lapa plant, in Brazil, which is one of Alstom’s competence centres for the production of stainless-steel trains. The remainder of the trains will be manufactured in Dunnottar, The X’Trapolis Mega is the new X’Trapolis-type train developed by Alstom to fit South Africa’s 1.067 m gauge and can travel at speeds of up to 120 km/h, with the potential to be upgraded to 160 km/h.

The train is a customised design based on the Alstom X’Trapolis standard platform, “which can boast a proven ability to handle a large number of passengers”, said Alstom Transport MD for Southern Africa Yvan Eriau.

He says the new X’Trapolis train was developed by Alstom in response to the ever-growing number of commuters, assisting in the mitigation of traffic congestion by converting car users and, in the case of South Africa, taxi users into rail commuters.

The Gibela contract with Prasa is part of the programme, launched in 2010 by government, aiming to replace the ageing suburban trains in service in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban with 1 200 electric trains over 20 years.

The Prasa train is an electric multiple-unit train composed of six cars and its modularity allows the train to be adjusted according to the number of commuters. The train can accom-modate up to 1 200 passengers, includes six wide doors per car (three to each side) and step-free entrances to facilitate passenger flows during peak schedules while reducing headways between trains.

The train will also be equipped with Alstom’s Train Tracer module, which generates a con-tinuous flow of data by radio transmission to a ground-based server with regard to changes on the train’s components. This technology can anti- cipate problems and failures and help with troubleshooting.

Over the 18-year contract, which was signed in October last year, Alstom’s first goal is “obviously to successfully deliver the contract to the full satisfaction of the customer”, Eriau tells Engi-neering News. But, beyond that, this contract will allow Alstom to establish a footprint is South Africa, which it intends to use “as a springboard” to pursue business opportunities in the whole of Southern Africa.

Therefore, he says, Alstom is carefully following the upcoming business opportunities in Southern Africa.

“Alstom is a multispecialist, capable of provid-ing the whole range of rolling stock (from tramway to very high speed trains) and signalling. So we are looking into every opportunity [in Southern Africa], with a careful and selective eye,” Eriau adds, noting that some of the opportunities in the region, such as the Swaziland–South Africa rail link, have the size to justify the company’s expansion in the region from rolling stock to infrastructure.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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