BUCHAREST (Romania), September 23 (SeeNews) – Romanian railway infrastructure operator CFR signed a 2.72 billion lei ($655 million/560 million euro) contract with international consortium RailWorks for an upgrade of a railroad section, the government announced.
The consortium comprises France-headquartered Alstom as leader, Greece's Aktor and Romanian companies Arcada and Euroconstruct, the government said in a press release on Tuesday.
Some 82% of the funding necessary for the rehabilitation of 28.2 km of railroad connecting Apata to Cata, part of Brasov-Sighisoara section, is covered by non-reimbursable EU funds under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme. The remainder will be provided from Romania's state budget.
Works on the project are expected to take four years.
The Brasov-Sighisoara section is part of the Rhine - Danube Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
The project completes the previous one for Lots 1 and 3 of the same section, which was awarded to RailWorks in March.
Alstom said in a separate statement on Wednesday that its share of the contract amounts to more than 70 million euro ($82 million). According to Alstom, the project aims to upgrade railway infrastructure and superstructure of the railroad section in order to allow for a maximum travel speed of 160 km/h for passenger trains and 120 km/h for freight trains.
Rehabilitation works will be carried out on bridges, underpasses and tunnels. Also, civil engineering works will be carried out at several railway stations including signaling, fiber optics and electrical installations, Alstom said.
The pan-European Rhine-Danube Corridor links the cities of Nuremberg, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Curtici, Simeria, Brasov, Bucharest and Constanta.
Alstom is a France-based multinational company operating worldwide in rail transport markets, active in the fields of passenger transportation, signalling and locomotives. Aktor is one of the largest construction companies in Greece, a member of the Ellaktor Group.
Arcada, founded in 1994, is a Romanian construction company active in civil engineering works. Euroconstruct Trading '98 is a Romanian construction company.
(1 euro = 4.8641 Romanian lei)