Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic on Friday signed with Koncar Management Board head Gordan Kolak a contract for the delivery of 20 low-floor trams, which will be put into operation in two years at the latest, warning that some of the trams in use were close to 50 years old.

The project for the procurement of new trams is worth €40 million, or two million per tram, and it is entirely financed with money from EU funds.

Tomasevic said that the 20 trams to be procured were just the first batch of a total of 40 to 60 trams to be bought.

“The deadline for the delivery is around two years. I hope the first new trams will be put into operation even sooner because rejuvenating the tram fleet is very important for the reliability of the tram schedule. Some of the trams in use in Zagreb are 48 years old,” Tomasevic told reporters outside the ZET city transport company’s offices.

He recalled the recent procurement of 65 city buses, noting that talks were underway with the Transport Ministry on the purchase of 100 buses to run on electricity or hydrogen.

The new trams will be manufactured by the Zagreb-based Koncar company, which was the only one to submit an offer in an international tender.

Transport Minister Oleg Butkovic said that Koncar had also won a tender to manufacture 21 new trains for the HZ Putnicki Prijevoz company, with money allocated under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, noting that most of the trains had already been delivered.

Butkovic said that over the past four years his ministry allocated €120 million to Zagreb to expand the roundabout at the southern entrance to Zagreb, renovate the tram infrastructure and buy 109 buses. He added that a part of the railway passing through the city was being renovated as well.

Koncar Management Board chair Kolak said tramways and trains are among the most important high-technology products of the Croatian industry, and that the awarded job will be a good reference for Koncar for further exports.

“We would not be exporting trams to Latvia had we not done jobs for ZET. Croatian companies cannot export if the Croatian industry is not given a chance in Croatia,” he said.

ZET Management Board chair Marko Bogdanovic said that in addition to rejuvenating the company’s fleet and transition to alternative fuels, new tram lines will be built as well, with work on those projects expected to start in 2024.