Clear road ahead AŽD Praha

CLEAR ROAD AHEAD

AŽD Praha is a major Czech producer of signalling, telecommunication, information and automation technologies supplied predominantly to the rail and road transport sectors. Romana Moares spoke to the company’s CEO, Mr Zdeněk Chrdle, under whose management the company has experienced the best period in its 60-year history.

Railway signalling technologies made and supplied by AŽD Praha are currently installed in almost 20 countries around the world. As a result of recent product development and cutting edge technologies introduced to the market, the company has become one of the leading players in its sector.

“I must emphasise that AŽD Praha is a company with Czechonly capital. I would like to define AŽD Praha as an European company with Czech technologies developed by Czechs, or with the aid of Czech secondary and higher education,” stresses the CEO at the beginning of the interview. He further explains that the company focuses on supplying its products to predominantly eastern European markets, even though it has also won customers further afield, for example in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Malaysia and many other countries.

Rapid development

The technologies that AŽD Praha makes and supplies are fully comparable, in terms of their technical parameters and performance, to those of major competitors. “Czech signalling technologies have undergone an unbelievable evolution. A few years ago I would have never imagined AŽD Praha to have its own integrated automated train control system ETCS,” says Mr Chrdle.

“We thought we would become a sub-contractor of some global company and offer our free production capacity, for example for assembly of parts. However, the competitors turned their back on us and we had to quickly decide what to do next. After all, the fixed part of ETCS had been developed by our company; the automated train control system ETCS had already been installed and commissioned in Slovakia and Czech Republic,” he reflects, adding that the company is currently developing the mobile part of ETCS.

Impressive references

The state-of-the-art technology soon raised interest beyond the borders of the domestic market. When asked about the most important customers, the CEO says: “The ongoing contracts in Bosnia and Herzegovina have definitely been extremely important to us.

We consider Bosnia and Herzegovina to be a highly promising market, and at the moment this market is our priority. We have supplied our products for two railway lines there – Sarajevo-Bradina and Doboj-Banja Luka.”

The company has a list of impressive references in many other countries, for example in Belarus, Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia or Azerbaijan, to which AŽD Praha supplied in-house developed and produced road telematics systems.

“If I am to evaluate our export markets activities from the reputation point of view, I would definitely highlight Slovakia. Not only the installation of ETCS mentioned earlier, but the whole European system of railway transport control – ERTMS – has been completed there recently. And this within a single year, which is an extraordinary tight deadline,” claims Mr Chrdle.

The company has recently entered a tender to purchase two regional lines which are of no more use to the Czech Railway Infrastructure Administration. The plan is to turn them into testing polygons, where the latest products developed by AŽD Praha would be tested. “These will be purely Czech signalling technologies making use of satellite systems or progressive level crossing systems, which can prolong or reduce warning time according to the speed of coming trains or wireless control technologies,” explains Mr Chrdle.

Determined to succeed

How does he see the company competing in the increasingly demanding export markets moving forward? “One of our strengths is that we do not only install and commission our products but have developed a system of continuous customer care and support including consultancy. We want our systems to be user-friendly for our customers,” says Mr Chrdle. He further explains that the company’s experts are able to even connect AŽD Praha’s technologies to the existing, very often obsolete national technologies. “Our key competitive advantage is that we know how to modify and adapt signalling technologies upon request. When a customer knows what he wants, he will get it from us, including the required language version. The attendants thus do not have to work with English but can use their native tongue, which is a very important aspect for the railway safety,” he points out.

Currently, exports account for about 25 per cent of total output, but the CEO makes no secret of the fact that that management would like to increase this figure to 30 or 35 per cent. “We want to develop our activities not only in Turkey, as I have already mentioned, but also in the Balkan region, in countries such as Serbia, Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina. We would also like to continue our success in the Baltic countries. And there is another big challenge for us – Poland – where the situation is very complicated and local companies watch the region very closely. We are not going to give up, though, and we will keep fighting. I believe we have a lot to offer to this market,” concludes Mr Chrdle. n