The plant has 60 days to deliver all 200 wagons; the first repair falls due after 4 years or 350,000 km, whichever comes first. It replaces a tender for 200 wagons worth about 29 million lari that the railway announced on 8 July and cancelled the same day, and a tender for 120 wagons in February 2025 that ended with all four bidders disqualified.
“European countries do not produce freight wagons of our type,” Abashidze said. Georgia’s wide gauge, shared with the rest of the former Soviet railways, is the reason, and the Russian plant’s price closed the argument.
The plant has 60 days to deliver all 200 wagons; the first repair falls due after 4 years or 350,000 km, whichever comes first.
The purchase lands in the corridor Georgia is selling abroad. Its ports handled 13.7 million tonnes in 8 months, 24% more than a year earlier, and Kobakhidze priced $7 billion of infrastructure to 2032 at the United Nations on 24 September; the wagons that carry the freight between them come, for want of an alternative, from a plant in Russia.