PKP Cargo to purchase new locomotives
By Karol Chlipalski
PKP Cargo will soon announce a tender for 24 dual-system electric locomotives to be delivered in 2006, Janusz Mincewicz, PKP Cargo's spokesman, told the Business Journal.
They will be the first purchases of new train engines in nine years by the heavily indebted PKP group. The new locomotives will be used for transporting cargo, he said.
The order comes in the wake of an earlier order submitted by German operator DB Cargo for 500 multifunctional locomotives that could operate in Germany and abroad, according to Henryk Klimkiewicz, head of Tor, a railway business consulting firm. DB Cargo could be interested in taking over part of the Polish cargo market when the country opens its railway market to European competition in 2006, he said.
"Ordering 24 locomotives could be an answer proportional to the size of PKP Cargo," Klimkiewicz said.
Mincewicz declined to reveal any details about the order, including how much PKP Cargo is going to set aside for the purchase or the rail company's source of financing. Industry experts, however, estimate the contract to be around €8.1 million-€16.2 million (zł. 35 million-zł. 70 million), depending on the technical specifications of the locomotives, which are still unknown. The average delivery time for new locomotives is two years.
Locomotive manufacturers were elated at the news.
"It's excellent news, not only for us, but also for all producers of rail equipment," said Marek Szelewicki, spokesman for the European rail equipment producer Alstom.
Marek Kućmin, spokesman of Canadian rail transport company Bombardier, said that his company is ready to participate in the tender, which he hopes will generate numerous orders from PKP Cargo for rail equipment.
German industrial giant Siemens, which is active in the rail equipment field, also expressed interest in the tender.
The country's main rail equipment manufacturers include the former Pafawag in Wrocław, Alstom Konstal in Chorzów, and multinationals Bombardier and Alstom, which all produce mainly for export to Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Greece, the United States and Malaysia.
Major rail equipment producers have complained about the lack of orders from the companies of the former public rail transport monopolist PKP.
The 24 locomotives will be PKP's first order for new equipment since 1997. The last order was for 50 electric locomotives from Adtranz, a joint venture between ABB Transportation Segment and DaimlerChrysler Transportation. The locomotives were produced in the Wrocław plant formerly known as Pafawag, but PKP never paid for or took delivery of them due to its financial problems. The locomotives were then sold to an Italian rail operator by Bombardier, which took over Adtranz in 1999. The last locomotive purchased by PKP was delivered in 1997.
PKP Cargo is the most financially robust subsidiary of the heavily indebted PKP group. It specializes both in cargo transport and in locomotive rentals to other operators. The company owns about 1,300 locomotives, 1,000 of which are used to transport cargo and 300 for passenger transport.
The decision to buy the new locomotives was made after the company announced good financial results for 2002. PKP Cargo earned almost €40 million (zł. 170.3 million) on revenue of nearly €1.4 billion (zł. 6 billion), while the estimated debts of the whole PKP group exceeded €2.3 billion (zł. 10 billion).
