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A view of the third-class air-conditioned passenger coaches supplied by TMH to the Egyptian National Railways Photo courtesy: TMH
Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) announced last week that it held exploratory talks with officials from a Hungarian rolling stock company to collaborate on new projects and study the potential of establishing service and maintenance centres for the company in East Port Said.
On Friday, 3 February 2023, Budapest Business Journal, quoting state news agency MTI, reported that Egyptian National Railways (ENR) had added another 50 passenger carriages to the original 1,300-unit order with Hungarian firms, raising the value of the contract by 100 million euros to €1.1 billion. The report said 724 carriages have already been delivered.
The SCZONE statement didn’t name the Hungarian company. However, the original contract for 1,300 passenger carriages valued at €1 billion was awarded in July 2018 to Transmashholding-Hungary (TMH Hungary) owned by Russia’s Transmashholding (TMH), with half of the cars to be made by TMH’s Tver Carriage Works (TVZ) and the other half by Hungary’s Dunakeszi Járműjavító (DJJ).
In 2019, TMH Hungary became an equally owned joint venture (JV) between TMH and Hungary’s Magyar Vagon. In June 2020, the two partners acquired 90 percent of DJJ through another equally owned JV called TMH Hungary Invest. In July 2022, TMH announced that it was selling its Hungarian businesses to MA-VAG due to sanctions.
Russian news agency Interfax said in a June 2022 report that TVZ’s contract obligation of 650 passenger cars had been completed.
(Writing by Eman Hamed; Editing by Anoop Menon)
