Finland: The manufacturer has confirmed that the management of its Transtech site has opened consultations with staff on workforce reorganisation.
Up to 200 of the site’s 600 employees may be affected. The options under consideration include redundancies, moves to part-time working and changes to job roles. The Transtech plant is the largest employer in the village of Otanmäki, which has a population of around 1,000.
The review was triggered by a ruling from Finland’s Market Court, which in March dismissed Škoda Group’s complaint. The manufacturer had contested the outcome of the tender for the supply of up to 183 trams for Helsinki. Switzerland’s Stadler was named the winner, even though its bid exceeded the procurement budget and Stadler had no vehicle in its portfolio that matched the tender requirements.
The court found that Škoda Group’s bid did not meet all the technical requirements, and the contracting authority was therefore entitled to exclude it from the tender. The Czech company itself has maintained that the grounds for its exclusion were fabricated.
The Helsinki contract was viewed as key to filling the Transtech plant’s order book. The company may now have to cut jobs, though it stresses that any such changes will not put current or future commitments of the Finnish site at risk.
Separately, Škoda Group is appealing the Market Court’s ruling to Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court and is seeking an interim measure to suspend the signing of the contract with the winner until a final verdict is reached. It maintains that the lower court incorrectly assessed the technical component of its bid.
The framework tender, announced in 2023, had an initial value of €1.6 bln. Its firm part covers the supply of 30 unidirectional and 33 bidirectional trams plus 30 years of maintenance. The value of Stadler’s bid has not been officially disclosed. The Transtech plant, part of Škoda Group since 2015, has been the sole tram supplier to Helsinki for more than 13 years. In recent years it has been delivering five-section ForCity Smart Artic X54 trams to the city.
