Rail group Alstom announced on Thursday that it had signed an agreement to purchase 51% of South African rail company Commuter Transport & Locomotive Engineering (CTLE), for an undisclosed amount.

CTLE, specialising in the modernisation of trains, was previously known as Union Carriage and Wagon (UCW).

UCW participated in building the rolling stock for the Gautrain project.

Current shareholders, Commuter Transport Engineering and the Industrial Development Corporation, were to remain shareholders of the restructured group.

Once the sale agreement was finalised, Alstom would launch an “integration project” to strengthen CTLE’s structure through the development of local competencies, the group said in a statement.

This integration project would broaden the scope of CTLE’s activities, enabling it to offer a complete rail-product portfolio, including infrastructure, signalling, trains and components, as well as services, “to better address Southern Africa’s railway transport needs”.

Based in Nigel, east of Johannesburg, CTLE employed 450 people.

It owned a 80 000 m² manufacturing facility and generated a turnover of more than €15-million in 2014.

Alstom said in a statement that the acquisition would strengthen its own presence in the region, allowing it to “offer a broader range of rail products and solutions to better address the region’s transport needs”.

CTLE was expected to benefit from Alstom’s “global leadership in rail transport, new technologies, as well as its world-class tools and processes. It will also support the creation of jobs and enable skills development among the existing staff. Moreover, the partnership will enable the company to obtain stronger financing capabilities to develop its business in both domestic and export markets”.

“We are delighted to sign this agreement with our South African partners,” said Alstom Middle-East and Africa senior VP Gian-Luca Erbacci.

“This is a win-win partnership that will strengthen the rail sector in South Africa, boost its economy and, in the long term, address the needs of other countries in the Southern African region.”

Alstom was already present in South Africa through its local joint venture, Gibela.

Gibela was involved in one of the country’s biggest ever transport projects through the supply of 600 X’Trapolis Mega commuter trains to the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, in a multibillion-rand deal.