RBC: at least 1 trillion rubles will have to be spent on replacing decommissioned railcars

By 2030, about 200,000 wagons on the network will be decommissioned in Russia Russian Railways due to end of service life informed RBC with reference to analyst dataVTB Leasing. Operators will have to spend at least 1 trillion rubles to replace them.

According to Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of INFOLine-Analytics, at least 214,000 wagons will be decommissioned during this period. As RBC’s source in one of the operators noted, by 2030 the service life of 237,000 wagons will expire – 18.3% of the listed rolling stock fleet on the Russian Railways network. Most of them are gondola cars (114,000 units), tanks (53,000) and platforms (26,000).

Since 2017, the number of produced regions in Russia has regularly exceeded the decommissioning of old ones, the director of the railway industry’s customer service department noted “Gazprombank Leasing” Andrey Bocharov. The operator, according to him, due to plans to increase freight traffic by 2030, will have to purchase twice as many cars as will be written off, i.e. we are talking about at least 400,000 pieces.

Considering the dynamics of prices for new cars (which will amount to at least 5 million rubles per piece in the first quarter of 2024), at least 1.2 trillion rubles will have to be spent on fleet renewal. (6 million rubles per wagon), Burmistrov noted. The cost of acquiring 400,000 railcars is estimated at 2.5 trillion rubles.

As the publication recalls, the ban on the use of old cars in Russia has been in effect since 2016. Their service life ranges from 10 to more than 30 years, depending on their type.

How wrote earlier in May, Vedomosti, the output of freight railway rolling stock decreased in the first quarter of 2023 by 16% compared to the same period in 2022 to almost 13,000 cars due to a shortage of components. Such data was provided by the State Transport Leasing Company (STLC). The production of innovative railcars (with an increased load of 25 tons per axle) sank the most in January-March – it fell by 51% to just over 3,000 units.

The decline in the production of railcars, coupled with the slowdown in the transportation of goods through the Russian Railways network, is already leading to an increase in rental rates for railcars. By the end of 2023, they can grow by 18-27% in annual terms and reach 1600-2100 rubles. per wagon per day (depending on the type of rolling stock), follows from the STLC review.

In 2023, STLC expects to increase the volume of railcar purchases by 16% by 2022 to 55,000 units. “This demand will be supported by growth in the cargo base and high disposal volumes,” the review says.