OREANDA-NEWS. September 16, 2011. Tata  Steel has secured a major order to supply railway lines for a new high-speed  track between the French cities of Bordeaux and Tours.

Tata  Steel will supply 84,000 tonnes of high quality rail for the new  South-Europe-Atlantique line - a 302km (188 miles) long line which will be one  of the world’s largest infrastructure projects launched in the last decade.

The  steel will be manufactured in Scunthorpe, UK, before being rolled into rail at Tata  Steel’s mill in Hayange, north-east France, for delivery from 2014. The company  will also supply switches and crossings to the construction consortium COSEA.  The total value of the steel supplied will be around €80 million (about ?70m).

The  South-Europe-Atlantique project is the largest public-private partnership  contract ever signed in France’s rail sector. It will connect south-western  France with high-speed rail services from northern Europe, including London,  Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.

Trains travelling  at 300km per hour (186mph) will reduce the journey time from Paris to Bordeaux  to two hours and five minutes. Work on building 19 viaducts and seven tunnels  will start in the first half of 2012. At the peak of the project there will be  4,500 construction workers employed.

Gerard  Glas, Head of Tata Steel's Rail Sector, said: "This is a prestigious project  which we are delighted to have secured. We will be supplying rails each  measuring 108 metres long. These longer rails give passengers a smoother ride  and reduce maintenance costs."

 “This  order is also an endorsement of our company strategy to invest in premium steel  products. We are currently ramping up production at our Hayange rail rolling  mill after the completion of a €35 million upgrade. The investment means we can  now produce 108-metre rail at our facilities in France and the UK."

"When  the first passengers travel on the new line in 2016, they will be able to  travel from Paris to Bordeaux in the same time it takes to travel from Paris to  Lyon - a fantastic achievement."

Tata Steel supplied the rail from its Hayange plant for  the track on which a TGV broke the world train speed record in 2007. The French  train reached a speed of 574.8kph (357mph) between Paris and Strasbourg.