UWC and URALCHEM-TRANS sign agreement to develop maintenance infrastructure

Research and production corporation United Wagon Company (UWC, the Holding or the Company) (MOEX: UWGN) and URALCHEM-TRANS, a transport and logistics subsidiary of URALCHEM HOLDING, have signed an agreement at PRO//Motion.1520, an international transport and logistics forum, on further development of joint infrastructure for repair and maintenance of new generation freight cars manufactured at UWC’s Tikhvin Freight Car Building Plant.

The parties have agreed to set up a service centre providing a full range of repair and maintenance work for UWC’s new generation freight cars at the Murashi station repair depot on the Gorky Railway network (a subsidiary of URALCHEM-TRANS). The Murashi depot already has experience servicing Tikhvin cars that are owned or managed by URALCHEM HOLDING: the facility has been authorized to carry out current uncoupling repairs and stock spare parts for bogies with enhanced axle load since 2016.

Vsevolod Kovshov, Director at URALCHEM-TRANS, commented, “We are developing our railcar fleet in accordance with URALCHEM’s strategy for systematic efficiency gains in logistics. The fleet is being updated and expanded solely by the acquisition of cars with increased payload capacity, and UWC is one of our largest and most reliable suppliers of such cars. We intend to further develop cooperation with UWC in order to increase the share of new generation cars to 25% of our fleet by 2021 against 14% at present. As well as the economic advantages associated with the innovative bogie design, payload capacity and body space, the cars compare favorably with typical models by overhaul period. These factors together mean that we can substantially reduce the cost of delivering our products to customers. Freight cars supplied by UWC represent a large part of our new generation car fleet. Diversifying the functions of our service centre so as to enable it to do all types of routine maintenance on new generation cars is a real step forward that will further reinforce the security of shipments provided by our company.”

Dmitry Losev, Deputy CEO for Technological Development at UWC, said, “The whole 1,520-mm gauge area is now covered with the service of current uncoupling repairs for freight cars made by UWC. Our holding is now working to enable companies to carry out scheduled maintenance by establishing top-class service centres. UWC is working closely with its partners to help create such facilities and to train personnel who can operate them."

To date, 15 facilities (including the Murashi depot) have been awarded the status of top-class service centres. The centres are located on eight different railway networks across Russia (the October, Moscow, Gorky, South-Eastern, West-Siberian, East-Siberian, Zabaikal and Far Eastern Railways). United Wagon Company will continue to develop its service network, striving to increase the number of top-class service centres in step with the increase in the number of cars that are in use and require depot repair.