Press releases

2021/07/07

CAF SECURES TWO SERVICE CONTRACTS IN SWEDEN

National rail transport operator, SJ AB has awarded EuroMaint Rail AB, a Swedish subsidiary of  the CAF Group, two service contracts worth more than €100 million in total.  

Firstly, the Swedish state-owned operator, SJ selected the CAF Group subsidiary to provide  maintenance services for 12 years for the fleet of trains that run on the Krösatågen and Kustpilen  lines and provide service in south Sweden, specifically in the Jönköping, Kalmar, Kronoberg,  Blekinge, Halland and Skåne regions.  

SJ will begin operating the Krösatågen and Kustpilen lines from December 2021, for which reason  it made an agreement with Euromaint to maintain - from that date - the fleet that is currently in  service, as well as the new units that CAF will soon supply under the contract secured just 3  months ago. This contract consisted in the supply of 28 new trains, 20 EMUs (electric units) and  8 BMUs (biodiesel-electric bimodal units) which the company AB Transitio will purchase and lease  to the regions which operate the service on the aforementioned Krösatågen and Kustpilen lines.  The maintenance activities are currently being mobilised and are scheduled to begin this  December. They will be carried out at workshops in Nässjö and Kalmar.  

The SJ AB operator has also selected Euromaint to remodel the fleet of overnight passenger cars.  This contract consists of the remodelling of a total of 57 cars from various series - BC4, WL1,  WL4 and WL6 - with this work planned to be carried out at the workshop Euromaint owns in the  Swedish town of Örebro. The upgrading work will begin on these vehicles in August 2021 and  continue until February 2025. With this investment, the operator, SJ AB intends to improve night  travel and meet the comfort, reliability and safety expectations of passengers that use these types  of services.  

EuroMaint has been a benchmark company in the Nordic railway market for many years, with a  significant market share in the train fleet maintenance sector, an activity the company combines  with the supply of railway components for operators in the region.  

Securing these new contracts is yet another testament to CAF's firm foothold in the Scandinavian  region, a continually growing market, where CAF has already supplied units for the high-speed  line that connects Oslo with its airport, the Helsinki metro and the tram network serving the cities  of Stockholm, Oslo and Lund.  

THE SUCCESS OF CAF’S LEADMIND DIGITAL PLATFORM 

Finally, it should also be noted that further progress is being made in the Nordic market with the  implementation of CAF's LeadMind digital platform through contracts for the Lund tram, Oslo tram,  commuter trains for the Oslo-Bergen line in Norway, commuter trains for the aforementioned  Krösatagen and Kustpilen lines in Sweden and the recently awarded contract for the Gothenburg  tram. These will all include CAF’s predictive maintenance which provides both operation and maintenance benefits, one of the most significant being increased fleet availability for operators,  thereby avoiding stoppages and faults that affect passenger services.  

LeadMind has been designed to make it easier for operators and maintainers to manage data in  real time and to make swift and efficient decisions so as to avoid any events that might affect  services and to also be able to prioritise actions before the units reach the workshop. To this end,  LeadMind includes the possibility of automatic measuring and monitoring of the most significant  vehicle components, such as wheels, brakes, pantographs and bogies.  

LeadMind's advanced analysis represents a maintenance process transformation that directly  affects operation, as it only operates on affected components when the first symptoms are  detected, increasing operating efficiency to help operators improve the quality of the services they  provide. This CAF-developed platform is now a reality with more than 30 active projects in 20  different countries.