The director of Siemens Turkey’s high speed trains department has said the company plans to bid in a tender expected to be opened by the Transport Ministry to buy a total of 80 high speed trains in mid-2016.

"We want to bid and we are evaluating the process now,” said Siemens’ Cüneyt Genç in an interview with Reuters.

Any companies that want to bid must find a local partner and make the production in a facility established in Turkey.

"We are in the assessment process in finding a local partner,” Genç added.

The Turkish State Railways (TCDD) bought a total of seven high speed rail sets from Siemens in 2013. The company, which submitted one of these sets, plans to deliver the others this year.

Siemens has been establishing a tramway factory in the northwestern district of Gebze for a 30-million-euro investment. The facility is planned to open by the end of 2017.

The country plans to open a tender to acquire 80 high-speed trains by the middle of this year, Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım stated on March 3, adding that the expected value of the investment will be around $5-6 billion. The ministry plans to acquire a total of 106 trains in line with a plan to extend the country’s high-speed train network.

Three companies have so far announced that they would bid: While Spain’s Patentes Talgo plans to bid with Turkey’s Tümosan and Canada’s Bombardier with Turkey’s Bozankaya, France’s Alstom has not named its local partner yet.

(www.hurriyetdailynews.com)