MTR wins contract for Sydney rail link

MTR Corp and its consortium partners have won a A$3.7 billion (HK$26 billion) contract to deliver and operate Sydney's North West Rail Link, Australia's largest public transport project, which is worth A$8.3 billion in total.

The contract awarded to the consortium by the government of the state of New South Wales was an "operations, trains and systems contract" and was the largest of the three delivery contracts for the railway project, MTR and other partners of the Northwest Rapid Transit consortium said on Tuesday.

"MTRC will invest and take the lead role in railway operations, commencing from 2019," the firm said in a statement. But the rail operator is not involved in other contracts including tunnelling and viaduct building.

MTR won an HK$18.5 billion contract to run the Crossrail train line in London in July. The Sydney rail line is 36km long, much shorter than the 118km London line.

The rail operator has been expanding into rail-related businesses outside Hong Kong as its profit from property development at home declined. Profit from property development fell 54.6 per cent year on year to HK$203 million in the first half of this year.

"The [Australian] federal government's objective is to catalyse A$125 billion in new infrastructure spending by the end of the decade," said Marcelino Fernandez Verdes, executive chairman and chief executive of Leighton Holdings, an Australian construction and engineering company that is one of the five partners in the consortium.