United Wagon Company and Metafrax expand cooperation

PJSC “Research and production corporation “United Wagon Company” (“RPC UWC” or the Holding) (MOEX: UWGN), the market leader in innovative railcar building in the 1520 mm gauge area, submits 20 tank cars for formalin to PJSC “Metafrax”, the largest Russian producer and exporter of chemical freights. A servicing center is opened on the territory of chemical production for freight cars servicing.

Under the contract, the manufacturing-plant TikhvinChemMash (part of RPC UWC) has already submitted the first batch of tank cars of model 15-6900-01. Tank cars, which tanks are made of corrosion-proof steel, provide for the transportation of a wide range of chemical freights. Metafrax plans to use tank cars for loading of formalin in its manufacturing plants.

Thanks to technical characteristics tank cars leave existing counterparts far behind. Tank car’s being equipped with bogie with increased axle load ensures increased payload capacity of 76.5 t. The construction design of the tank car with a broken axis allows achieving maximum draining of the tank car. Increased terms of between-repairs runs, which provide for the reduction by more than 3 times of the tankcar life cycle costs are a considerable competitive advantage of the car of model 15-6900-01. Tank car service life is 32 years.

Tank car model is designed by “All-Union Research and Development Centre for Transportation Technology” (part of RPC UWC). Metafrax specialists of Transport Department determined the main requirements to the construction design and characteristics of the new generation freight car during tank car design stage.

In order to arrange for warranty and post-warranty servicing of UWC rolling stock the Parties also agreed to open a servicing center of the 3rd category on the territory of production site of the company Metafrax. The center is authorized for the performance of current repairs and storage of spare parts of Barber bogie, as well as wheel sets with 23.5 and 25 tf.

Igor Chukreev, Chief of Transport Department at Metafrax, commented on the transaction: “Metafrax possesses considerable experience of dealing with UWC innovative freight cars. 134 innovative tank cars for methanol were accepted for operational use in the plant in 2016. This year 20 tank cars for formalin loading are submitted to the company under the contract. The programme of the plant’s railway infrastructure development provides for 900 new tank cars for the fleet update until 2019. We are sure that the operational use of new and tailored to our needs tank cars for formalin will be the most economical and safe. Moreover, the creation of our own servicing center based on our production capacities will further strengthen the transport infrastructure.”