Skip to main content

The Bombardier Innovia Monorail 300 system, designed for the Brazillian city of Sao Paulo, is shown in this artist's rendering.The Canadian Press

With an $816-million (U.S.) deal to design and build a monorail system in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Bombardier Inc. has secured the beachhead it was seeking to make inroads in the potentially lucrative Latin American market.

Montreal-based Bombardier's rail unit, Bombardier Transportation, and two consortium partners have clinched a $1.44-billion contract to build a 24-kilometre monorail system in booming Sao Paulo, the company said Monday. Bombardier's share of the total amount is $816-million.

Bombardier Transportation, which has only a modest presence in Latin America, had been counting on winning the Sao Paulo monorail project as a breakthrough that will help position the company for other growth throughout South America, the division's president, André Navarri, said recently on a conference call.

New rail and light rail projects in the region are expected to get a huge boost from billions of dollars of infrastructure spending in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, said Mr. Navarri.

Bombardier's Innovia Monorail 300 system in Sao Paulo will serve as an extension of the existing Sao Paulo Metro Line 2. The new monorail line - to be called Expresso Tiradentes - is expected to cut the travel time for thousands of passengers to 50 minutes from two hours, the company said in a press release.

The fully automated Innovia Monorail 300 system is also being designed and supplied to a new financial district in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

"This is very good news for Bombadier," said Benoît Poirier, a financial analyst with Desjardins Securities. "Latin America represents a huge potential market and this should open doors for Bombardier."

Bombardier Transportation spokesman Marc-André Lefebvre said Brazil is one of three key emerging countries the company is counting on for future major expansion opportunities, the other two being China and India.

One Latin American project with potentially big returns is a proposed high-speed link between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Calls for tenders are expected some time next year and Bombardier plans to make a submission based on its Zefiro high-speed rail technology, which allows for peak speeds of about 300 kilometres per hour, said Mr. Lefebvre.

Bombardier Transportation's partners in the Sao Paulo monorail project are Brazilian contractor Queiroz Galvao and construction firm Construtora OAS.

Engineering, design and testing for the vehicles will be done at Bombardier's facility in Kingston, Ont. Initial manufacturing will be done at the company's Pittsburgh, Pa. site but subsequent cars will be built at Bombardier's plant in Hortolândia, Brazil.



Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe