CAF loses the battle with Stadler in court and walks away from the 650 million contract in Ireland
Setback for CAF in the courts. The High Court of Ireland has given way to the awarding of the Swiss company Stadler as supplier of the new d trains.cross-border service Enterprise between Dublin and Belfast through an order valued at 650 million euros. The contract was paralyzed after the manufacturer based in Beasain (Guipúzcoa) filed an appeal to challenge the choice made by the Irish authorities Irish Rail and Northern Ireland Railways.
The judge thus endorses the claim of these companies, which warned that the suspension could mean the loss of up to €165 million of EU funding for the project. Although CAF’s appeal involved a detailed investigation of the facts, the court leaned, given “the slightest risk of injustice”, towards the urgent need to allow the contract to progress, to prevent European funding from being lost and so that the program is not compromised.
In this way, the agreement with Stadler – initially awarded on September 18 of this year – is unlocked to, foreseeably, be signed in the coming days. For CAF, it means that This judicial route no longer seems to offer any effective guarantee of reversing the award. His appeal remains open, but the preventive suspension has been lifted and the execution of the contract can continue.
The tender, launched at the end of 2023, covered a new fleet of eight trains to replace the fleet of diesel coaches that currently operate the cross-border service to the north of the country. In addition, the acquisition process also includes a maintenance contract that groups technical support services and the supply of spare parts for a period of up to 15 years.
Thus, the turn of events is consummated for the Gipuzkoan manufacturer, which has just emerged favorably from an important litigation in Belgium. There, the French manufacturer Alstom appealed months ago against the election of CAF as the preferred bidder to execute a ‘megacontract’ for the construction of hundreds of trains for 3.4 billion euros. On this occasion, CAF, from the other side of the trench, was reaffirmed by the Belgian SNCB after several meetings of its board in which the commitment to the Spanish constructor as a supplier was reiterated despite the play of pressure from the French group, unions and Belgian parties.
Despite the blow in Ireland, the company reaches this episode at a time of operational solidity. In its latest quarterly results update, the group highlighted that the year is progressing with significant growth with a net profit of 100 million euroswhich represents an increase of 66% compared to the same period of the previous year. Revenues also keep pace, with an increase of close to 8% year-on-year, which raises the turnover above 3.1 billion.
