Siemens ‘eager to bid’ in Turkey high speed rail tender, searching for local partners
ISTANBUL - Reuters
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The director of Siemens Turkey’s high speed trains department has said the company plans to bid in a tender expected to be opened by the Transport Ministry to buy a total of 80 high speed trains in mid-2016.“We want to bid and we are evaluating the process now,” said Siemens’ Cüneyt Genç in an interview with Reuters.
Any companies that want to bid must find a local partner and make the production in a facility established in Turkey.
“We are in the assessment process in finding a local partner,” Genç added.
The Turkish State Railways (TCDD) bought a total of seven high speed rail sets from Siemens in 2013. The company, which submitted one of these sets, plans to deliver the others this year.
Siemens has been establishing a tramway factory in the northwestern district of Gebze for a 30-million-euro investment. The facility is planned to open by the end of 2017.
The country plans to open a tender to acquire 80 high-speed trains by the middle of this year, Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım stated on March 3, adding that the expected value of the investment will be around $5-6 billion. The ministry plans to acquire a total of 106 trains in line with a plan to extend the country’s high-speed train network.
Three companies have so far announced that they would bid: While Spain’s Patentes Talgo plans to bid with Turkey’s Tümosan and Canada’s Bombardier with Turkey’s Bozankaya, France’s Alstom has not named its local partner yet.