Jean-Pierre Audoux, Delegate-General of the French Railway Industries Association (FIF)

The French railway manufacturing sector is in ebullient mood for the first time, its different  players having reached agreement, strangely enough, over a common strategy involving the launch of   Project First (focused on the rail sector as a responsive and structured industry serving the cause of sustainable transport) - a spinoff  from the Rail Industry States General - after the Summer break. Some € 7.8 million will be invested over the next three years with the end-aim of achieving exports worth an extra € 1.5 billion plus 8000 jobs created by Neapolia Rail, which played a key role in the selection of 24 projects launched and will participate in them. As remarked by FIF Delegate-General Jean-Pierre Audoux, "... the Neapolia experience has ushered in a new approach for stimulating the railway industrial sector.The idea is to pressurise SMEs into growing their business so they  develop into medium-size companies, like in Germany.The cluster approach offers an alternative route. The 10 000 or so French SMEs( 30 000 workers) active in the sector have been innovating with success over the past twenty years, working alongside the leading manufacturers, but in random fashion.The sector's global acceleration will involve organising them to some extent." The Neapolia Rail Cluster , like the other French ones, will involve itself in Project First to share its experience, work on the sustainability and efficiency of  the fabric of subcontractors and to bolster the  innovative capacities of rail-sector SMEs and SMIs.

We need everybody on board and no one should fail to show-up" insists FIF Delegate General Jean-Pierre Audoux. Up to now any comparison between France and Germany has made for uneasy  reading. Germany annually exports some € 5.5 billion worth of railway equipment, which is more than the € 5 billion posted by the French railway manufacturing sector. Hence the urgent need, on this side of the Rhine, to pull together, to build bridges, to show solidarity and to stimulate the genes already present in the DNA of these clusters.