By Ashley Karen
Škoda Transportation Group, the Rail transport company has won a contract worth more than $26.48m (CZK580m) from Hyundai Rotem to deliver 17 sets of full electrical equipment for new passenger locomotives.
The new locomotives will operate on a new railway line spanning 550km in Tanzania, Africa, and will be finally assembled at the Hyundai Rotem production plant in South Korea. Deliveries from Škoda in Pilsen will also be managed here.
This line is managed by the local TRC rail operator and runs across the coastal port of Dar es Sallam and the city of Makutupora.
Bedřich Koukal, Škoda Electric’s CEO mentioned: “With this current contract, we are building on the previous successful projects which we have already implemented with the Hyundai Rotem Group. In recent years, for example, this concerned a major delivery of several dozen locomotives to Turkey.”
According to the firm, this Tanzania-based project is ‘technically very interesting’.
“We will be supplying complete sets of electrical equipment including main and auxiliary drives, battery chargers, traction motors, gearboxes, and wheelsets,” stated Karel Majer, Škoda Electric’s sales director.
He added: “The locomotives will run at speeds of up to 160km/h on the route, which under the local conditions represents a significant increase in speed compared to the usual standard.”
Škoda and Hyundai Rotem have collaborated on many joint projects including the production of locomotives. Under one such cooperation, the Pilsen-based company manufactured full equipment sets for 80 locomotives for Škoda. These equipment sets were made for the Turkish client TCDD.
In addition, the Pilsen-based company participated in the deliveries of LRV ‘light unmanned metro’ vehicles for South Korea’s Incheon.
