A consortium made up of Egyptian contractor Orascom Construction, Bouygues subsidiary Colas Rail and Japanese engineer Hitachi has been chosen to modernise Cairo’s Metro Line 1.
The €800m deal will involve renewing the electrical and control systems for 44km of track and 35 stations. The aim is to make the line more efficient and to increase its capacity.
Colas and Orascom will modernise the supply of electricity used to power the trains, along with related civil works. Hitachi Rail will handle the signalling, control and telecoms infrastructure.
The line was the first metro in Africa and the Middle East when it was completed in 1987 and still forms the backbone of the city’s mass transit system. It is known as “the French Line” among Cairenes, as it was financed by the French government and built by a consortium of seven French companies together with Cairo-based Arab Contractors.
In 2021, French train-maker Alstom secured a $1bn contract to upgrade the rolling stock on the line.
Orascom, which owns 35% of the contract, announced the win in a press release. It commented that it had a history of working on the Cairo metro going back to the 1980s, and that more recently, it had worked on Line 4 of the system as well as a regional metro in Alexandria.
It also noted that the company had a longstanding partnership with Colas and Hitachi.
The work, which is expected to last 64 months, is being part funded by loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and L’Agence française de développement.
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