MIDAS MAKES FORAY INTO THE US RAIL MARKET WITH US$58.3 MILLION
CONTRACT WIN
- Single largest export contract to-date
Singapore & Hong Kong, March 3, 2015 – Midas Holdings Limited (麦达斯控股有
限公司) (“Midas” or the “Company”, together with its subsidiaries, the “Group”; SGXST stock code: 5EN; SEHK stock code: 1021) today announced that its subsidiary,Jilin Midas Aluminium Industries Co., Ltd (“Jilin Midas”) has won a US$58.3 million (approximately RMB365.9 million) contract to supply aluminium alloy extrusion
profiles and fabricated parts for a rail project in the United States.
With delivery slated to take place progressively between 2015 and 2020, this contract is Midas’ single largest export contract to-date as well as the Group’s maiden rail contract in the United States.
California has set off a global race to supply train cars for the state’s nascent high-speed rail line, a $1 billion contract proponents say could fuel a U.S. manufacturing boom worth far more than that.
The state’s High-Speed Rail Authority is seeking bids to supply 16 trains, each capable of carrying 450 passengers at speeds faster than 200 miles an hour. Germany’s Siemens AG and Canada’s Bombardier Inc. are among nine foreign manufacturers that have told California they are interested in bidding for the contract, which the state will award early next year.
Overseas companies have long eyed the U.S. as an undeveloped market for high-speed rail. Still, opposition to public financing of such lines among Republicans and others has left California the only state pursuing a bullet-train system. The state’s rail authority expects to order as many as 95 trains over the next 14 years, making the purchase worth more than $3 billion.
Chinese train makers, CSR Corp. and China CNR Corp., which are in the process of merging, might have an edge because they may be able to help arrange financing for California’s project, said Nicholas Heymann, a William Blair & Co. analyst in New York. Siemens and Bombardier also are expected to bid, but the industry has questions about how committed they are to high-speed rail over the long term, Heymann said.
“The Chinese are willing to look at this as an export market or product for the country and that’s not the approach that Siemens or Bombardier is taking,” he said.
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