In the business year 2019/20, voestalpine Railway Systems generated EUR 1.4 billion in revenue at 70 production and sales locations worldwide. 7,000 employees work in this segment, 1,500 of them in Austria.
New turnout plant in France
In the past, voestalpine Railway Systems has supplied rails, turnouts, and related components for the French railway network — the second largest in Europe with 30,000 kilometers of tracks. With the acquisition of SEI.L (Societe d’Équipement Industriel. Lietaert), a turnout plant founded near Paris in 2012, the company is now also positioning itself as a major supplier for France’s state-owned railway company SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français).
From this new location voestalpine Railway Systems France, the company also plans to expand its business activities in other markets dominated by SNCF technology, for instance in Maghreb.
Expansion in China
Thanks to its joint venture CNTT (Chinese Turnout Technologies), which was established in 2007, voestalpine is already one of the top three suppliers for the national high-speed network in China, which is to be expanded from 30,000 to 50,000 kilometers in the coming years. Its stake in Sanjia Turnouts—an established producer of turnout systems since 2004 with around 150 employees at the central Chinese location of Ruzhou—has allowed voestalpine to successfully enter the booming short-distance traffic sector. And voestalpine Signaling China, a 100 percent subsidiary of the voestalpine Group, has been established as the first local production and development site for digital monitoring systems.
Shareholding in Argentina
Via its Spanish subsidiary JEZ, the voestalpine Railway Systems Group recently acquired a share in a turnout assembly plant near Buenos Aires, Argentina. The regional production share and optimized sales opportunities offered by the company Sistemas Ferroviarios Argentinos SRL will help to significantly increase the Group’s competitiveness in the Argentinean market.
