FS Italiane: bilateral meeting with Russian railways
Between the CEOs Oleg Belozerov and Gianfranco Battisti, on the margins of the Italian-Russian forum
Rome, 4th July 2019
The strengthening of the long-standing relationship in the engineering area, the existing, ongoing projects involving the FS Italiane Group and Russian railways (Rossijskie Železnye Dorogi, RZD) and the development of new synergies, including commercial ones.
These were the issues that were the focus of the bilateral meeting that was held today in Rome – on the margins of the Italian-Russian Forum – between the CEO of RZD, Oleg Belozerov, and the CEO of FS Italiane, Gianfranco Battisti, to take stock of the cooperation between the two railway groups.
The collaboration between the FS Italiane Group and Russian railways has, in part, been brought to life through seminars held for RZD managers, and commercial development projects for railway stations.
In April 2019, Italferr – FS Italiane’s engineering company – signed two important contracts with RZD International (the Russian railways’ subsidiary for overseas business) on behalf of a consortium of Italian companies.
The contracts, which have a total value of around 4.8 million euros, cover technical assistance, checking planning and supervision of work on the Belgrade-Novi Sad line (in Serbia) and the supervision of work at the new control centre in Belgrade for managing train traffic control on the Serbian railway network.
Italcertifer, the Group’s certification company, is following the certification processes for the new Moscow-Kazan and Moscow-Saint Petersburg high-speed railway lines. This is both in the capacity of Design Verification Engineer (DVE), for the independent checking of the project, and also as Independent Safety Assessor (ISA) to verify the compliance to safety standards of all the railway sub-systems, including ground and on-board signalling, infrastructure and energy.
In June 2019, FS International organised meetings with RZD and Hungarian railways (MAV) to construct the new Trieste-Moscow corridor, for rail links between Italy and Russia through Slovenia, Hungary and Ukraine, and going on to China.
There are also a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and a Road Map of Cooperation in force to develop engineering cooperation with Italferr and Italcertifer for the new Dedicated Super Speed Routes (Moscow–Kazan and Moscow–Saint Petersburg).