The General Electric company is considering the Kryukov Railcar Building Works (Kremenchuk, Poltava region) as a platform for localizing production of its diesel locomotives in Ukraine. General Electric’s General Director in Ukraine Vyacheslav Feklin announced this in an interview with the CFTS portal.

"Our team has spent a lot of time in Ukraine and visited a number of production sites... The Kryukov Railcar Building Works is in very good condition. Preliminarily, we plan to localize production there," he said.

He added that it would still be necessary to invest in development of expertise in the area of development of diesel locomotives there. In general, the costs will be borne by both sides.

"Speaking of material investments, we are at the final stage of negotiations. I can only say that these will be joint investments," Feklin said.

The localization of assembly of American diesel locomotives should begin with 10% (the share of Ukrainian products in the price of the final product) and gradually increase to 40%.

"To reach the maximum localization level of 40%, we need to certify suppliers, including comprehensive testing of components. We do not want to repair a locomotive after two months because of the failure of a component," Feklin said. 

As reported, Ukrzaliznytsia announced in in late November 2017 that General Electric was planning to install production facilities at the at the Kryukov Railcar Building Works. One of General Electric’s reasons for refusing to work with Ukrzaliznytsia’s enterprises was that these enterprises specialize mainly in repair and not production of locomotives.