Ukraine's City Transport Group LLC, the managing company of LAZ Holding, and France's Alstom, a world's leader in production of transport, have signed an agreement of cooperation at the first international annual business conference, ABC: Ukraine & Partners, held in Kyiv on June 13-14, 2013.
The information and public relations department of the secretariat of
the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine reported on June 14, 2013 that
production of modern trams for Ukraine using the latest solutions would
be started in Lviv.
“The sides plan to start realizing the project this year. At the
initial phase they set the goal of producing 20-30 trams a year,” reads
the report.
The first investment in the project will amount to EUR 20-30 million.
The owner of the Ukrainian holding, Ihor Churkin, told reporters at
the business conference that the trams will be made at the industrial
facilities of the group in Lviv, and up to 100 Ukrainian enterprises
could participate in equipping the trams.
“It’s a great chance for us as an industrial site, as there is no
need for a large number of buses, and there are many bus producers,
while we want to focus on the production of city electric transport. We
cannot use the way of slow innovations – it will take years to create a
good product. We want to receive the quality and solutions that Alstom
gives us,” Churkin said.
He said that the project is also important for Alstom.
“They have been present on the Russian market for a long period of
time [they acquired a stake in Transmashholding], they have production
facilities in Kazakhstan – electric and diesel locomotives. They
consider us a good partner,” Churkin said.
As for the pace of the production volumes, he gave a cautious
forecast, taking into account the price of trams and the ability of
buying them by cities and towns.
“We’re carefully forecasting for three or four large cities: it will
be 20-30-40 trams a year. Our investment depends on the volume of
production and localization. We’ll do our best – the more we produce the
more interesting it will be for Alstom to work with us,” he said.
Churkin also said that it is important to receive not only jobs or
solutions, but later Alstom could create a company producing electric
engines and other systems in Ukraine, so that the tram would be 100%
made in Ukraine.
“Alstom could decide to sell our trams, for example, to Thailand –
this is not only their arrival to the Ukrainian market, but the
possibility of participating in the global production and labor division
market for us jointly with Alstom,” he said.
The press service of the holding told Interfax-Ukraine that TramRus
(JV of Alstom and Transmashholding on production of trams in Russia]
took part in the signing of the agreement.
“This company has a license for production of Alstom trams, and we’ll have a sub-license,” the company said.
LAZ holding is one of the largest manufacturers of buses and trolleybuses in Ukraine.
