Trenitalia requests loan at EIB for ILSA trains
Trenitalia has requested 550 million at the European Investment Bank (EIB) to finance rolling stock for the operations of ILSA in Spain and operations under their own name in Italy.
The project consists of the acquisition of 34 high-speed trainsets for commercial services mostly on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) in Spain and Italy. In Spain, 20 trains will be operated by ILSA under a lease from Trenitalia. They will run on the lines Madrid – Barcelona, Madrid – Seville/Malaga and Madrid-Valencia/Alicante under a 10-year framework agreement following the recent liberalisation of the market. Hitachi is delivering the trains, type ETR 1000, known in Italy as the Frecciarossa 1000.
Open access
In Italy, 14 trains will expand the high-speed services operated by Trenitalia on open access on the high speed network The project supports the liberalisation of passenger railway services and the expansion of the high-speed rail markets in Spain and Italy.
ILSA plans to start its operations in the second half of 2022 and will represent 30 percent of the high-speed market in Spain. Trenitalia is the incumbent state operator in Italy, and together with other shareholder Air Nostrum, a Spanish regional airline based in Valencia, it is behind the new operator ILSA.
Awaiting approval
Electric rail transport is acknowledged to make a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation and therefore the project can be counted towards the EIB’s climate action target, says Trenitalia. Some of the lines on which the trains will operate are also located in so-called cohesion and transition regions (Valencia and Andalusia in Spain and Campania in Italy). The financing request is currently waiting for approval by the board of directors of the EIB.
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