Spain’s CAF awarded the Cincinnati train supply contract

MADRID | The US market once again knocked on the doors of the Spanish railway equipment manufacturer CAF. The company, based in Guipuzcoa (Basque Country) will supply trains for the rail project in the city of Cincinnati, in the State of Ohio. In an initial phase, the company will manufacture a small number of vehicles, which it will also keep updated.

So far, CAF has been chosen as preferred supplier and will now negotiate the conditions with the local authorities, who will be responsible for funding much of the project (specifically the US Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Authority). The Spanish company, which presented its offer through its US subsidiary CAF USA, will manufacture the trains at the plant that the unit owns in Elmia (New York State) since the programme must meet the US government rule that 60% of the components have to be manufactured in the country.

CAF, which has set out four other firms in the selection process, will expand then its presence in the US, where it operates as a provider of trains to light rail networks in Pittsburgh and Sacramento, as well as in Houston, still under construction. In the area of ​​trams, the company’s international experience is remarkably extensive, having been a provider to urban networks such as Nantes and Besançon (France), Belgrade (Serbia), Edinburgh (Scotland) and Antalya (Turkey), plus many more projects in Spain.

The Basque manufacturer is one of the Spanish companies that has signed more contracts abroad in recent years and its presence reaches across five continents, thanks to a contract that was recently awarded in New Zealand. The last contract abroad that CAF communicated publicly was in Latvia.

In addition, CAF is one of the companies selected by British authorities to participate in the Crossrail trains project, a new rail network that will run through the city of London and beyond. The contract is valued at more than €1.1 billion.