Poland exports nearly USD 2 billion in trains, trams, and rail components every year. Its two main manufacturers have supplied rolling stock to Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Romania, Ghana, and Bulgaria. Of the 1,591 new trams put into service in Polish cities over the past twenty years, 1,103 came from domestic factories. This is the story of an industry that barely anyone outside Poland knows exists. Polska eksportuje prawie 2 miliardy USD w pociagach, tramwajach i komponentach kolejowych kazdego roku. Jej dwaj glowni producenci dostarczyli tabor kolejowy do Niemiec, Wloch, Kazachstanu, Rumunii, Ghany i Bulgarii. Sposrod 1 591 nowych tramwajow wprowadzonych do sluzby w polskich miastach przez ostatnie dwadziescia lat, 1 103 pochodzilo z krajowych fabryk.
When people think about train manufacturing, they typically think of Germany, France, Switzerland, or Japan. Siemens, Alstom, Stadler, Hitachi. These are the names that appear in media coverage of European rail contracts. Poland rarely comes up, and yet the numbers are remarkable. Poland exported almost USD 2 billion in rail vehicles and components in 2024, with rolling stock parts accounting for over $810 million and passenger cars over $710 million. Polish-built trams run in German cities. Polish diesel multiple units serve regional rail passengers in southern Italy. Polish electric locomotives haul freight across Central Europe. And the two companies that built this position, Pesa in Bydgoszcz and Newag in Nowy Sacz, trace their workshop histories to the nineteenth century. Kiedy ludzie mysla o produkcji pocigow, zwykle mysla o Niemczech, Francji, Szwajcarii lub Japonii. Polska rzadko sie pojawia, a jednak liczby sa niezwykle. Polska eksportowala prawie 2 miliardy USD w pojazdach kolejowych i komponentach w 2024 roku. Polskie tramwaje jezdzaja po niemieckich miastach. Polskie spalinowe pociagi wieloczlonowe obsługuja pasazerow regionalnych kolei w poludniowych Wloszech.
This is not a new industry assembled in the last decade. It is the continuation of a manufacturing tradition that predates the unification of Germany, the founding of the United States rail network, and the birth of most of the companies that are now considered Poland's global competitors. The workshop that became Pesa was opened in Bydgoszcz in 1851, when the city was still called Bromberg and was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. The workshop that became Newag opened in Nowy Sacz in 1876, under Austro-Hungarian administration. Both companies survived partition, two world wars, four decades of communist central planning, and the chaotic post-communist privatisation and restructuring of the 1990s, and both emerged from that history as genuine industrial competitors in the European rail market. That kind of resilience across 170 years of political upheaval and industrial change is worth understanding. To nie jest nowa branza zmontowana w ostatniej dekadzie. Jest to kontynuacja tradycji produkcyjnej, ktora poprzedza zjednoczenie Niemiec. Warsztat, ktory stal sie Pesa, zostal otwarty w Bydgoszczy w 1851 roku, gdy miasto bylo jeszcze nazywane Bromberg i bylo czescia Krolestwa Prus. Warsztat, ktory stal sie Newag, zostal otwarty w Nowym Saczu w 1876 roku, pod austro-wegierska administracja.
The Bydgoszcz workshop that eventually became Pesa was established in 1851 under the name Krolewskie Glowne Warsztaty Naprawcze Kolei, the Royal Main Railway Repair Workshops, serving the railway network of Prussian-administered western Poland. For most of its first hundred years, the workshop did exactly what the name suggested: it repaired and overhauled steam locomotives and freight cars for the state railway network. The shift from repair to manufacture came slowly, accelerated by the transformation of Poland after 1989 and the emergence of a domestic market for new urban transport vehicles as Polish cities began replacing their Soviet-era tram fleets.
After 1920, following Poland regaining independence, the Bydgoszcz facility became the PKP Class 1 Principal Workshop, one of the six largest in the country. In the 1920s the workshop was affected by the departure of workers of German nationality, approximately 1,500 employees, who were replaced by Poles, many of them returning emigrants from Westphalia and the Rhineland. The facility survived the Second World War, then operated under communist management as ZNTK Bydgoszcz until 1998. The transformation into what became Pesa as a manufacturing company rather than a pure repair shop was decisive and rapid. By 2001 the company had begun supplying new trams to Polish cities, and within five years it had won its first export order in Western Europe. Po 1920 roku, po odzyskaniu przez Polske niepodleglosci, obiekt w Bydgoszczy stal sie Glownymi Warsztatami PKP Klasy 1, jednym z szesciu najwiekszych w kraju. Obiekt przetrwal II wojne swiatowa, a nastepnie dzialal pod komunistycznym zarzadem jako ZNTK Bydgoszcz do 1998 roku. Transformacja w to, co stalo sie Pesa jako firma produkcyjna, a nie czysto naprawcza, byla zdecydowana i szybka.
On 29 May 2009, Pesa signed a contract to deliver 186 type 120Na low-floor trams to the city of Warsaw, replacing 40 percent of the entire Warsaw tram fleet, at a cost of 1.5 billion zloty, approximately $460 million at the time. It was the largest single rolling stock order ever placed by a Polish city and the contract that established Pesa's industrial scale. Then, on 19 September 2012, Deutsche Bahn signed two framework contracts with Pesa to build up to 470 diesel multiple unit trains for regional and local services across Germany, with a total value of up to 1.2 billion euros. A company that had been repairing steam locomotives in a Prussian workshop had become one of Germany's regional train suppliers within sixty years of the end of the Second World War. 29 maja 2009 roku Pesa podpisala kontrakt na dostarczenie 186 tramwajow niskopodlogowych typu 120Na dla miasta Warszawy, zastepujac 40 procent calej floty tramwajowej Warszawy, za kwote 1,5 miliarda zlotych. Nastepnie 19 wrzesnia 2012 roku Deutsche Bahn podpisalo dwie umowy ramowe z Pesa na budowe do 470 spalinowych pocigow wieloczlonowych dla uslug regionalnych i lokalnych w calych Niemczech, o wartosci calkowitej do 1,2 miliarda euro.
Today Pesa employs 4,000 people directly and produces vehicles that operate in 11 countries, including Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ghana. In April 2024, Ghana received the first of two diesel multiple units ordered from Pesa, to be operated on the Tema-Mpakadan Railway Line, making Pesa one of the few European train manufacturers supplying rolling stock to sub-Saharan Africa. In January 2026, Pesa expanded further into Western Europe by acquiring HeiterBlick, a century-old Leipzig-based tram manufacturer, specifically to increase production capacity and deepen its presence in the German market.
Since 2018, Pesa has been state-owned. Prior to that, 92% of shares were held by eight private investors including members of firm management, with the chairman Tomasz Zaboklicki among the significant owners. All shares were transferred to the Polish Development Fund when the government took control of the company. Pesa is now exploring further international expansion: the Polish state investment fund that owns Pesa submitted a proposal to acquire 100% of Talgo, the Spanish high-speed train manufacturer, which would represent a step-change in Pesa's position in the European market. The outcome of that process was still being evaluated as of mid-2026.
Pesa is also working on hydrogen propulsion. Its SM42-6Dn hydrogen shunting locomotive has PKN Orlen as its first customer, and in mid-2024 Pesa and Swedish companies Väte Rail and Hankavik signed a letter of intent regarding the commissioning of hydrogen locomotives in Sweden from 2027 to 2028. A manufacturer that began repairing steam engines in the 1850s is now designing hydrogen-powered locomotives for Nordic markets. That is a genuinely extraordinary arc.
The workshop in Nowy Sacz that became Newag was founded in 1876 when the city was part of Austria-Hungary and the workshop was built to service the newly constructed Tarnow to Leluchow railway line. It employed some 1,800 workers by 1922, survived the Second World War under communist nationalisation as the ZNTK Nowy Sacz enterprise with a workforce of about 3,500 in 1952, and then went through financial turmoil around 2001 before its shares were acquired by a private domestic investor in 2003. The current name was adopted in 2005.
The transition from repair shop to manufacturer was marked definitively in 2012, when the first electric multiple unit from the 35WE series, belonging to the Newag Impuls family, was produced. In 2013, the 31WE Impuls train achieved 211.6 km/h on Poland's Central Rail Line, setting a new speed record for a train designed and manufactured entirely in Poland. That same December, the company debuted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, making it the only major Polish rolling stock manufacturer to be publicly traded. Newag is the locomotive market leader in Poland. Its Griffin and Dragon locomotives achieve very high reliability rates and are used by rail carriers across the country. Griffin is the first Polish multi-system locomotive adapted to both the domestic 3kV DC power supply system and the 15kV or 25kV AC power supply systems used in Western European countries, making it capable of crossing borders without an engine change. The company has delivered over 80 electric locomotives and over 200 passenger multiple units.
The most significant recent contract: in May 2024, Newag secured a PLN 2.7 billion contract with PKP Intercity for the delivery of 35 hybrid dual-mode multiple units. That is one of the largest individual rolling stock contracts in Polish history, covering trains capable of running on both electric and diesel power, an important capability for a network where not all lines are fully electrified. Newag also formed a consortium with Siemens Mobility for the final assembly of Siemens Inspiro metro trains for the Warsaw Metro and Sofia Metro, and in November 2025, Orlen Kolej ordered 20 Dragon 2 locomotives from Newag alongside a simultaneous order for 20 Gama 3.0 locomotives from Pesa. Both contracts went to Polish manufacturers despite the procurement being open to international competition.
Poland's tram manufacturing sector is broader than Pesa alone. Modertrans Poznan, established in 2005 as a subsidiary of MPK Poznan, the city's public transport operator, grew out of the merger of the city's bus repair plant and tram maintenance department. With approximately 237 employees, it is a small manufacturer by comparison with Pesa and Newag, but it has delivered over 520 trams across the Moderus Alfa, Beta, and Gamma model families to cities across Poland including Poznan, Lodz, Gdansk, Silesia, and Elblag. In May 2021, Modertrans unveiled the Moderus Gamma LF 05 AC, the first single-section fully low-floor tram produced in Poland. The company is city-owned, with MPK Poznan holding 75.92% of shares, and in early 2025 entered discussions with Spanish rail manufacturer CAF for a potential acquisition that would give the Poznan manufacturer international production reach through CAF's wider network.
Solaris is the other major name in Polish tram manufacturing, though its trajectory is rather different. Founded in 1994 as Neoplan Polska by Krzysztof Olszewski, Solaris built itself into one of the most innovative bus manufacturers in Europe, exporting to over 25 countries and winning multiple awards for electric and hybrid vehicles. It entered tram manufacturing in 2009 with the Tramino prototype, won its first commission for 45 trams in Poznan, and became the first Polish manufacturer to export trams to Western Europe when Jena, Germany ordered five vehicles in 2013. Solaris was subsequently acquired by CAF of Spain and its tram business was folded into a consortium with Stadler Rail. The Solaris name continues on buses, now as the European leader in electric bus manufacturing with an 18% market share. The tram manufacturing story shows how quickly Polish industrial capacity in this area developed: from a standing start in 2009 to export sales in Germany within four years.
The domestic market penetration figures are striking. Of the 1,591 new trams put into service across Poland over the past twenty years, 1,103 were supplied by domestic manufacturers, primarily Pesa, Modertrans, and Solaris. That represents approximately 69% of the total. The exceptions are notable: Warsaw received 123 Warsolino trams from South Korea's Hyundai Rotem between 2021 and 2023, and the Olsztyn network has supplemented its Solaris vehicles with 12 Panorama trams from Turkish manufacturer Durmazlar. But these are exceptions rather than the rule. MPK Poznan bought all 169 of its new trams in twenty years from domestic suppliers. All 74 new trams purchased by Lodz in the same period came from domestic factories. Gdansk achieved an entirely low-floor fleet through domestic procurement.
| CityMiasto | New Trams (20 yrs)Nowe Tramwaje (20 lat) | Domestic ShareUdzial Krajowy | Main SupplierGlowny Dostawca |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warsaw | 434 | 71% (281 of 434) | Pesa 281, Hyundai Rotem 123 |
| Krakow | 196 | 100% | Pesa (majority) |
| Poznan | 169 | 100% | Modertrans 104, Solaris 46 |
| Tramwaje Slaskie | 173 | ~47% new + overhauls | Pesa 70, Modertrans 10 |
| Gdansk | 70 | 100% | Pesa (two batches) |
| Lodz | 74 | 100% | Pesa 44, Modertrans 30 |
For train manufacturing specifically, the domestic share is similarly dominant but with more international competition. The main domestic producers in the train segment are Pesa Bydgoszcz, Newag, and H. Cegielski FPS. Foreign manufacturers including Alstom, Stadler, and Siemens also have a meaningful presence in Poland: Koleje Mazowieckie ordered Stadler Flirt3 electric multiple units, and Siemens Mobility formed a consortium with Newag for Warsaw Metro Inspiro cars. The forthcoming wave of CPK-connected infrastructure investment, estimated at EUR 16 billion in rail spending through 2027, will generate the largest order book in the history of Polish rolling stock manufacturing. Both Pesa and Newag are already preparing for this: in 2024 the two companies formed a consortium to jointly bid for a PKP Intercity contract covering 38 double-decker trains and 45 multi-system locomotives, the kind of combined scale that neither could address alone.
Pesa employs 4,000 people directly in Bydgoszcz, a city of 340,000 people in Kujawy-Pomerania. The factory has been the largest employer on that site since 1851, through Prussia, the Second Polish Republic, Nazi occupation, communist Poland, and the democratic republic. That continuity is not merely historical sentiment. It means Pesa's workforce carries accumulated craft knowledge, tooling expertise, and institutional memory that cannot be replicated quickly by a competitor. The same is true of Newag in Nowy Sacz, a city of 85,000 in the Carpathian foothills, where the railway workshop has been the dominant industrial employer for nearly 150 years. Modertrans in Poznan, though much smaller at approximately 237 employees, is owned by the city itself and serves the city's own tram network, creating a direct relationship between manufacturer and operator that is unusually close even by the standards of European municipal transit.
The workforce at these companies is highly specialised. Rail vehicle manufacturing requires welding, electrical engineering, software development, bogie and suspension engineering, passenger interior design, and homologation expertise for multiple regulatory regimes across different European countries. The supply chains feeding into Pesa and Newag extend across Polish industrial clusters: electrical components from Polish suppliers like Medcom, bogies manufactured in Poland, bodywork steel processed in Polish metalworking shops. The rail sector's total export value of USD 2 billion in 2024 is the visible tip of a much larger domestic industrial ecosystem that includes components, maintenance equipment, track infrastructure, signalling systems, and specialist engineering services.
The story of Polish rail manufacturing is easy to miss if you are not looking for it. No Polish train company appears in mainstream financial media alongside Siemens, Alstom, or Hitachi. No Polish tram brand has the cultural recognition of a Bombardier or a Stadler. And yet the factories in Bydgoszcz and Nowy Sacz have been building rail vehicles continuously through every political regime that has governed this part of Europe since the middle of the nineteenth century. They have survived conditions that eliminated far larger and better-capitalised competitors. They have won contracts in the most demanding markets in the world: Germany, where the engineering standards are among the most exacting in European rail, and Italy, which has its own deeply established train manufacturing tradition. Historia polskiej produkcji kolejowej jest latwa do przeoczenia, jezeli jej nie szukasz. Zadna polska firma kolejowa nie pojawia sie w glownych mediach finansowych obok Siemens, Alstom lub Hitachi. A jednak fabryki w Bydgoszczy i Nowym Saczu buduja pojazdy kolejowe nieprzerwanie przez kazdy rezim polityczny, ktory rzadzil ta czescia Europy od polowy dziewietnastego wieku. Przezyly warunki, ktore wyeliminowaly wiele wiekszych i lepiej dokapitalizowanych konkurentow. Wygraly kontrakty na najbardziej wymagajacych rynkach na swiecie.
The coming decade may be the most significant in the industry's modern history. CPK, Via Baltica, Via Carpatia, and the EU TEN-T funding programme will together generate the largest investment in Polish rail infrastructure since the interwar period, producing an order book for rolling stock that neither Pesa nor Newag has faced before at this scale. How they manage that growth, whether they can maintain quality while scaling production, and whether the Pesa-Newag consortium model proves durable, will determine whether the industry's next chapter is as impressive as the one that brought Polish trams to German cities and Polish trains to Ghanaian railway lines. Nadchodzaca dekada moze byc najbardziej znaczaca w nowoczesnej historii branzy. CPK, Via Baltica, Via Carpatia i program finansowania UE TEN-T razem wygeneruja najwiekszą inwestycje w polska infrastrukture kolejowa od okresu miedzywojennego. Jak beda zarzadzac tym wzrostem, zdecyduje o tym, czy nastepny rozdzial branzy jest tak imponujacy, jak ten, ktory przyniost polskie tramwaje do niemieckich miast i polskie pociagi na ghanaijskie linie kolejowe.
This article is produced by Fides Polonia Capital Management for informational and educational purposes only. Historical data on Pesa and Newag sourced from their Wikipedia entries, LinkedIn profiles, and industry press. Tram market share figures from Railway Gazette International February 2025. Export value figures from PAIH Polish Investment and Trade Agency 2025 Rail Vehicles Sector report. Fides Polonia Capital Management has no financial interest in Pesa, Newag, Modertrans, Solaris, CAF, or any rolling stock manufacturer referenced in this article. Newag SA (WSE: NWG) is a publicly listed company. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice or a recommendation regarding Newag shares or any other security. Niniejszy artykul jest produkowany przez Fides Polonia Capital Management wylacznie w celach informacyjnych i edukacyjnych. Dane historyczne dotyczace Pesa i Newag zaczerpnieto z ich wpisow w Wikipedii, profili LinkedIn i prasy branżowej. Fides Polonia Capital Management nie ma interesu finansowego w Pesa, Newag, Modertrans, Solaris, CAF ani zadnym producencie taboru kolejowego wymienionego w tym artykule.