Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LEADER 2030 (Learnings for European Autonomy to Deliver Europe's Rail in 2030)
Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-12-31
The LEADER 2030 project aims to predict the availability - or otherwise - of raw materials and components to deliver the target innovations for the railway sector defined by the Europe's Rail Programme by 2030.
The Rail Supply Industry (RSI) in the EU accounts for nearly half of the world market for rail products and has a market share of more than 80% in Europe, while – as top exporter – it accounts for approximately 20% of world trade with railway products. The world leadership of the European RSI is largely due to its research, development and innovation capacities, and these are strongly boosted and coordinated at EU level by the Europe's Rail programme and its predecessor Shift2Rail to transform the European railway system by 2030.
At the same time Europe – already today – is not producing around ¼ of the Railway supplies it needs; these include raw materials, intermediate products and finished products (the amount in Euros was around 2.500 billions in 2014, with increasing trend).
The COVID-19 lockdowns and the set of following crisis and supply disruptions have taught that the more you rely on Global Value Chains for your supplies, the more you are vulnerable. And in too many cases, the supply of key components and raw materials is not only very far from Europe but also concentrated in a few places, that boosts vulnerability. Not only: the greater frequency and severity of climate hazards is teaching that climate change is one more source of disruptions in Global Value Chains, interrupting production, raising costs and prices, and hurting corporate resilience.
Furthermore, Europe’s vulnerability can increase proportionally with the increasing demand for Advanced Technologies and Advanced Materials necessary to deliver also the innovations targeted by the Europe’s Rail Programme for 2030. This is posing a challenge in terms of actual capacity of Europe to supply and produce the necessary materials and components for such innovations, or to source them from more reliable and secure supply chains from oversea.
In such a complex framework, the LEADER 2030 project aims to give clear indications about the availability vs gaps of future European supplies, and will recommend industrial and policy actions to increase European autonomy in the Railway sector.
The Rail Supply Industry (RSI) in the EU accounts for nearly half of the world market for rail products and has a market share of more than 80% in Europe, while – as top exporter – it accounts for approximately 20% of world trade with railway products. The world leadership of the European RSI is largely due to its research, development and innovation capacities, and these are strongly boosted and coordinated at EU level by the Europe's Rail programme and its predecessor Shift2Rail to transform the European railway system by 2030.
At the same time Europe – already today – is not producing around ¼ of the Railway supplies it needs; these include raw materials, intermediate products and finished products (the amount in Euros was around 2.500 billions in 2014, with increasing trend).
The COVID-19 lockdowns and the set of following crisis and supply disruptions have taught that the more you rely on Global Value Chains for your supplies, the more you are vulnerable. And in too many cases, the supply of key components and raw materials is not only very far from Europe but also concentrated in a few places, that boosts vulnerability. Not only: the greater frequency and severity of climate hazards is teaching that climate change is one more source of disruptions in Global Value Chains, interrupting production, raising costs and prices, and hurting corporate resilience.
Furthermore, Europe’s vulnerability can increase proportionally with the increasing demand for Advanced Technologies and Advanced Materials necessary to deliver also the innovations targeted by the Europe’s Rail Programme for 2030. This is posing a challenge in terms of actual capacity of Europe to supply and produce the necessary materials and components for such innovations, or to source them from more reliable and secure supply chains from oversea.
In such a complex framework, the LEADER 2030 project aims to give clear indications about the availability vs gaps of future European supplies, and will recommend industrial and policy actions to increase European autonomy in the Railway sector.
During this Period, the project performed the following activities:
- WP1: Three the Deliverables issued. To deliver D1.1 "Map of disruptions experienced so far by the Rail Supply industry and lessons for the future", a very thorough desk-research was done on industrial disruptions experienced in Europe and on European weaknesses in critical and strategic raw materials, including the analysis of EU policies and initiatives adopted to tackle such challenges. In parallel, a online pan-European survey in 9 languages on disruptions experienced by the Rail Supply industry since 2020 was run from November to December 2023. It was answered by 105 companies from 37 regions in 16 countries and provided as result that 58,1% of respondents have suffered/were suffering supply disruptions. The more statistical results of it were included in D1.1 while the more technical ones were included in the D1.3 "Supplies alerts for the future". This Deliverable went into more detail about the type of railway supplies affected by such disruptions, going so far as to list which end products are suffering from these difficulties. Finally, the D1.2 "Lessons on disruptions and resilience from other sectors" analysed sectors whose experience was considered useful for the Railway sector, i.e. Defence, Aerospace, Clean Technologies, Automotive to verify the possible existence of resilience patterns - which was not the case - and to identify possible alternatives and joint needs for possible cross-sectoral supply coupling on the market. All the three Deliverables provided key insights for the activities under WP3 and WP4.
- WP2: Starting from the detailed desk research on the EU-RAIL Master Plan and MAWP, the activity continued with the preparation of questions and run of one-to-one interviews to coordinators and/or partners of the then-running EU-RAIL Projects; the interviews were meant to challenge the results of the desk research with first-hand information on the status, outcomes, and future technological requirements of the projects, including raw material dependencies and supply chain implications. In addition, the interviews were also extended to other 24 key European industry players for a wider outreach and validation of the research outputs.
- WP3: The activities concerned the analysis on Raw Materials supply distortions, availability, accessibility and supply schemes, which mostly focused on the Raw materials resulting of necessary to the Rail Value Chain. Such identification was possible thanks to: (i) Deliverables D1.1 and D1.3 providing the specific railway needs in terms of raw materials necessary for both state-of-the-art and innovative rail solutions; (ii) the results of the conference “Mining meets railway technology” and the visit to Europe’s largest open-cast iron ore mine in Austria, organised by the WP Leader on May 27th-29th, 2024 to advance sectorial knowledge and awareness, analyse weak points, but also to point out undesirable developments to the responsible players in politics, business and civil society and raise their raw materials awareness; (iii) the desk research results done under WP2, plus the results from the interviews ran.
- WP1: Three the Deliverables issued. To deliver D1.1 "Map of disruptions experienced so far by the Rail Supply industry and lessons for the future", a very thorough desk-research was done on industrial disruptions experienced in Europe and on European weaknesses in critical and strategic raw materials, including the analysis of EU policies and initiatives adopted to tackle such challenges. In parallel, a online pan-European survey in 9 languages on disruptions experienced by the Rail Supply industry since 2020 was run from November to December 2023. It was answered by 105 companies from 37 regions in 16 countries and provided as result that 58,1% of respondents have suffered/were suffering supply disruptions. The more statistical results of it were included in D1.1 while the more technical ones were included in the D1.3 "Supplies alerts for the future". This Deliverable went into more detail about the type of railway supplies affected by such disruptions, going so far as to list which end products are suffering from these difficulties. Finally, the D1.2 "Lessons on disruptions and resilience from other sectors" analysed sectors whose experience was considered useful for the Railway sector, i.e. Defence, Aerospace, Clean Technologies, Automotive to verify the possible existence of resilience patterns - which was not the case - and to identify possible alternatives and joint needs for possible cross-sectoral supply coupling on the market. All the three Deliverables provided key insights for the activities under WP3 and WP4.
- WP2: Starting from the detailed desk research on the EU-RAIL Master Plan and MAWP, the activity continued with the preparation of questions and run of one-to-one interviews to coordinators and/or partners of the then-running EU-RAIL Projects; the interviews were meant to challenge the results of the desk research with first-hand information on the status, outcomes, and future technological requirements of the projects, including raw material dependencies and supply chain implications. In addition, the interviews were also extended to other 24 key European industry players for a wider outreach and validation of the research outputs.
- WP3: The activities concerned the analysis on Raw Materials supply distortions, availability, accessibility and supply schemes, which mostly focused on the Raw materials resulting of necessary to the Rail Value Chain. Such identification was possible thanks to: (i) Deliverables D1.1 and D1.3 providing the specific railway needs in terms of raw materials necessary for both state-of-the-art and innovative rail solutions; (ii) the results of the conference “Mining meets railway technology” and the visit to Europe’s largest open-cast iron ore mine in Austria, organised by the WP Leader on May 27th-29th, 2024 to advance sectorial knowledge and awareness, analyse weak points, but also to point out undesirable developments to the responsible players in politics, business and civil society and raise their raw materials awareness; (iii) the desk research results done under WP2, plus the results from the interviews ran.
The economic and social effects produced by the project prove to be of utmost importance. In fact:
- the project Coordinator, Ms Veronica Elena Bocci, has been awarded with the "Women in Rail Award 2024" in the category "Research and Innovation" for this project. The Award was assigned by European Commission-DG MOVE, Europe's Rail JU, ERA, CER, EIM, UNIFE, ALE in a ceremony on September 24th at InnoTrans 2024;
- the Scientific Abstract "Forecast of gaps in critical supplies for Rail Innovations. A pan-European approach for resilience", submitted by the project Coordinator and the partners was accepted at the WCRR 2025.
All project results have started to untap a large scale of further actions and initiatives, most of which will be implemented after the end of the project, in order to use all leverages useful and necessary to actually foster the readiness of the Rail supply industry to the Railway transformations of 2030, securing not only its resilience but also its competitiveness on the European and global scale.
- the project Coordinator, Ms Veronica Elena Bocci, has been awarded with the "Women in Rail Award 2024" in the category "Research and Innovation" for this project. The Award was assigned by European Commission-DG MOVE, Europe's Rail JU, ERA, CER, EIM, UNIFE, ALE in a ceremony on September 24th at InnoTrans 2024;
- the Scientific Abstract "Forecast of gaps in critical supplies for Rail Innovations. A pan-European approach for resilience", submitted by the project Coordinator and the partners was accepted at the WCRR 2025.
All project results have started to untap a large scale of further actions and initiatives, most of which will be implemented after the end of the project, in order to use all leverages useful and necessary to actually foster the readiness of the Rail supply industry to the Railway transformations of 2030, securing not only its resilience but also its competitiveness on the European and global scale.