Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

Azerbaijan will start receiving AZ8A freight locomotives developed by the Alstom Company at the “Electrovoz Kurastyru Zauyty” production site in Kazakhstan in December 2016, EKZ joint venture Director General Bernard Peille told Trend.

The AZ8A electric locomotives with asynchronous traction drives will be built specifically for Azerbaijan and will be one of the most powerful in the world. They are able to pull up to 9,000 metric tons at a speed of 120 km/h.

Bernard Peille said that electric train designing and research work is currently underway.

“The EKZ should release the first locomotive approximately in July 2016,” Peille said. “Testing will be carried out afterwards, and the first deliveries to Azerbaijan will begin in December. In accordance with the contract, payments by the customer will be carried out in several tranches. The first payments will be made in the near future.”

The contract on the supply of 50 freight locomotives for Azerbaijani Railways was signed in 2014 and a final agreement – in May 2015. The total amount of the contract is slightly less than 300 million euros.

The locomotives supplied as part of this contract will be assembled at the EKZ joint venture – the production site, located in Astana, Kazakhstan.

French company Alstom continues to develop its business relations with Azerbaijan by introducing new possibilities.

Alstom is a global leader in the manufacture of equipment for the generation and transmission of electrical energy and railway infrastructure. The company operates in about 100 countries and has been operating actively in the Azerbaijani market for over 20 years.

Alstom is also cooperating with the Baku Metro regarding further expanding the underground and replacing the obsolete trains running on existing lines.
__

Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz