Chinese high-speed rail firms on right global track

UK project could prove vital in cracking overseas markets

Chinese high-speed train firms are expanding into the UK market, citing advanced technology, extensive experience and cost efficiency as their competitive advantages.

One immediate opportunity they see is Britain's HS2, the high-speed train project that links London with the English Midlands and Northern England. If their bid is successful, this will be their first project in a mature market, and may open doors for exporting to other mature economies.

"Western companies, such as Germany's Siemens AG and France's Alstom, entered the high-speed rail sector earlier, but no countries in the world have a high-speed rail network as extensive as China's," says Yu Weiping, vice-president of China CNR Corp Ltd.

CNR is to become the world's largest maker of rolling stock by sales after the merger with its Chinese competitor, China CSR Corp Ltd. CSR established a UK subsidiary earlier in May, which will become the UK subsidiary of the two merged companies.

Yu says that about 60 percent of the world's high-speed railways are in China and that China's high-speed rail network is the world's most complicated one.

"The climate and geographic situations in China are very diverse from north to south, from east to west. It is safe to say that if our high-speed trains can adapt to the complicated situation in China, they can run in any country in the world," he says.

Yu says his team has been following the HS2 project for a long time and is having ongoing communication with authorities in the UK.

HS2, planned by the UK government, will be built in two phases. The first phase, linking London and Birmingham, starts construction in 2017. It has a projected opening date of 2026 and a government-estimated cost of 22 billion pounds ($34.1 billion; 30.8 billion euros).

Phase two is an extension to Manchester and Leeds, opening by 2033. Other companies with an interest in HS2 are Alstom Group, Siemens AG and Japan's Hitachi Ltd.

Yu says his company has been tracking 28 projects from around the world. "However, it takes years for overseas governments to kick off a high-speed rail project. But I am very confident in our technologies and products. In a couple of years, we will gain more experience in high-speed trains, which means more of chance for us to win the project in the UK," he says.

The expansion of Chinese high-speed train firms in the UK is welcomed by experts in the railway industry who recognize the quality of Chinese high-speed train technology and believe their bidding for HS2 adds diversity and a dose of healthy competition.

"Chinese companies' experience, building an extensive amount of railways in China, has meant they are able to bring tried and tested solutions at a lower cost, and ones that rely on lower energy consumption levels than local firms," says James Jameson, vice-president of product strategy at Rivo, a British firm that supplies safety software to the rail industry.

Jameson says that local British companies wishing to compete for the same services in the procurement process, like the production of equipment, will not be able to compete with Chinese firms on price.

"Chinese suppliers who have a tested high-speed rail model of more than 7,000 miles will be extremely competitive on price."

Jameson says a win-win partnership is created when Chinese suppliers can help transfer experience and skills into the British market, help accelerate growth in terms of the industry and also provide better technology. There can be a win-win situation for British suppliers, Chinese suppliers, and the public, he says.

Roy Freeland, president of Perpetuum Ltd, a supplier of wireless train and track monitoring systems, says the expansion of CSR into the UK railway industry could create potential partnerships that can help British firms in the high-speed train supply chain to expand in the UK, China and globally.

"As CSR expands into the UK, it will need to build a supply chain locally. It may not be the whole of their supply chain, but will certainly be a part of it, so it provides a lot of opportunities for our supply chain firms, especially small and medium-sized businesses," says Freeland, who is also a member of the Rail Supply Group Council.

Freeland says that his Perpetuum colleagues have already visited CSR's headquarters in China to learn how they can fit into the CSR supply chain, and they have hosted a CSR manager visit to Perpetuum to learn about its strengths.

He says if CSR works well with UK firms on a UK project, they could cooperate more on other projects in international markets, so the potential benefit for UK railway supply chain firms is much greater than just what is available in the UK.

"In addition, cooperation with CSR can also open up access to the Chinese market for these UK firms, which is again a very big market in terms of high-speed trains," Freeland says.

Chinese high-speed train firms have also used local research and development resources to assist their expansion into the UK market, as demonstrated by a research and development partnership CSR established earlier this month with three UK universities: the University of Birmingham, Imperial College London, and the University of Southampton.

Lin Jianguo, a professor of mechanics of materials at Imperial College London, says the R&D partnership will focus on the next generation of rail travel technology, which involves making trains lighter and more durable, so that they are more cost effective to make, efficient to run, and are cleaner in environmental terms.

Imperial College London will also establish on its campus a dedicated R&D center, called the Sifang-Imperial Centre for Rail Transportation Manufacturing Technologies, led by Lin.

The center will focus on developing rail technologies to streamline the construction and testing of high-speed trains. Using the latest manufacturing techniques, the researchers aim to create trains that are made from advanced materials and fewer components, making them lighter and more fuel-efficient.

Clive Roberts, director of the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education and a professor at the University of Birmingham, says his team is working with CSR Times Electric in Zhuzhou on providing electrical and electronic railway systems.

It is applying some of its research and technologies into CSR's R&D work, such as system simulation and testing, intelligent trains with improved data management capabilities, new methods for air conditioning, and new ways to reduce the noise of railways, Roberts says.

His team is also working with CSR to understand European high-speed train requirements and regulations and how Chinese high-speed train technology can fulfill these requirements.

Roberts says one key difference is that Chinese systems are more uniform because almost all new development is focused on building new high-speed trains. In comparison, systems in Europe are more complex, because a lot of the high-speed trains are already built, and the focus is now on maintaining or upgrading them.

To understand these differences would equip CSR with the skills to both build new railway projects in Europe, and maintain and upgrade existing ones, he says.

Roberts says Chinese high-speed train companies are increasingly improving their safety standards, and his team is working with Chinese firms on this front. To make safe high-speed trains, it is important to first make sure the different components are designed correctly and that the system will withstand the test of time, and also to ensure the components integrate well as a whole.