THIERRY BAREL
President of the Management Board and CEO
At the end of the financial year, 31 March 2011, you succeeded Robert Joyeux as President of Faiveley Transport’s Management Board. What has been the impact of this change?Thierry Barel: This is a seamless change that we had been preparing for two years. When I joined the Group, Robert Joyeux asked me to revisit the Group's strategy to speed up our development and consolidate our position amongst global leaders for all of our activities. This strategy has already been implemented and is in effect as we speak.
What's behind this strategic push?Thierry Barel: It consists in focusing our energy on railway actors; car builders, operators and maintenance suppliers, to offer them the most comprehensive range of products and services. We strive to differentiate from our competition through quality, innovation and system integration levels.
Faiveley Transport wants to strengthen and adapt its organization to reflect that of its clients, making us more efficient and bringing us closer to our customers to better understand their needs. Moreover, we will continue to bring added value through engineering, manufacturing, marketing and after-sales services. Last but not least, we intend to develop our freight, regional and urban train segments and win market share in China, Germany, USA and Russia.
Do you think you could go offer even more added value?Thierry Barel: First of all, we want to offer our customers systems with a higher level of integration that help save space, weight, energy and provide a lower total cost of ownership. We will develop and produce these systems whilst continuing to save costs by rationalizing our production facilities. We focus on products with high technical added value.
In addition, we will continue to support organic growth and we are planning on pursuing a selective external growth policy and generating profit in line with our financial objectives.
In what context has the Group evolved in 2010? Thierry Barel: Long-term, the railway industry is set to continue growing. Asia, and above all China, is the most important market and Faiveley Transport still has a strong market potential on a worldwide scale. Europe is a mature market and is currently renewing its fleet, we won sizeable bids such as Alstom’s Regiolis last year and Bombardier’s Regio 2N train, both of which are for the French regions with the SNCF.
Our order book includes a brake contract for the Zefiro V300, Ansaldo Breda and Bombardier’s high-speed train. However, growth will come principally from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as we saw recently by winning a custumer service contract for lines 1 and 3 of the Sao Paolo metro system, a brake system contract for 100 locomotives in Suzhou, China, as well as contracts for several metro lines. In Russia, we won an emblematic air-conditioning contract for 190 cars in the city of Sotchi. Furthermore, we witnessed a pick up in the freight activity in the United States, due in part to the creation of a joint venture, Amsted Rail, a world leader in the production of freight bogie components with a 70% share of the global market, to whom we supply brake systems on an exclusive basis. This important step was reinforced when our brake test system at Faiveley Transport Ellcon was certified, which opens the yet untapped market of pressure distributors.
What advances has Faiveley Transport made in 2010? Thierry Barel: In addition to the orders mentioned above, Faiveley Transport has reasserted its international presence, becoming even closer to its local clients. For example, we have eight industrial sites in China, which are principally joint ventures with Chinese partners. We have decided to set up a stand-alone marketing and service structure in Beijing with a training centre showcasing our activities. We have adopted the same approach in Germany, a market highly respected all over the world.
Finally, this winter we inaugurated a new production site in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and a sales office in Moscow. This will enable us to localise the production of certain products requested by our Russian clients.
Are you confident for 2011? Thierry Barel: Our order book reached a record €1,470 million at the end of March 2011. We offer the world’s most comprehensive product and systems range for the railway market, and our 2010 commercial investments are already bearing their fruits. Now, we have to convert the try and provide our clients with products of impeccable quality to support them in their growth.
