As 2025 comes to an end, it marks a year in which GATX Rail Europe strengthened its position, expanded its fleet, navigated a challenging market, and took decisive steps to support the long-term competitiveness of the rail sector. Despite economic headwinds across Europe, we continued to invest, innovate, and collaborate, staying true to our commitment to make railcar leasing easier and to support a sustainable, future-ready freight network.

Major Investments
This year saw two historic investments that reshaped our international footprint. With GATX Corporation entering into an agreement to acquire approximately 105,000 railcars from Wells Fargo in the United States, the fleet is poised to grow from 111,000 to 216,000 units in North America alone. In Europe, GATX Rail Europe has received regulatory approval for the sale-and-leaseback transaction with DB Cargo for approximately 6,000 freight cars, a historic deal that strengthens our fleet and increases it to more than 36,500 railcars. Both these acquisitions further solidify GATX’s position as a leading global provider of railcar leasing and services.

Expanding Our Fleet
With our European fleet at more than 36,500 railcars, we’ve formed a diversified fleet across tank, freight, and intermodal railcars. This year, we’ve also introduced new superstructures for our intermodal railcars and supported an expanding customer base across many industries, including the construction and automobile industries, supporting projects ranging from railway construction to building materials logistics and facilitating electric vehicle transportation across Europe. These developments underline our role in equipping critical European industries with modern, efficient, and reliable rolling stock.

Customers and Industry Engagement
Customer satisfaction continued to guide our priorities. Feedback from the customer survey was excellent, which is a clear signal that our efforts to improve technical responsiveness, fleet availability, and service quality are felt across our customer base.

Spring brought us fantastic news and a confirmation from our industry peers when our CEO, Johann Feindert, was elected UIP president in April 2025, proudly accepting his nomination in Valencia in May. Since then, you’ve most likely seen him speak at many events calling for interoperability and transparency in the European rail transport sector.

One of these events was the transport logistic fair in Munich, which brought together customers, partners, and experts for discussions that led directly to several new contracts. The fair once again demonstrated that face-to-face exchange remains essential for forging strong, future-oriented relationships.

Technology & Training
Under the leadership of our Chief Technical Officer, Clemens Aschl, we strengthened our technical capabilities across technical services, workshop management, and maintenance. This included reducing spare part delivery times and optimizing our maintenance processes, critical improvements that remain a key differentiator and a focus for the years to come.

Beyond that, our state-of-the art offering in telematics and sensors solutions supports customers in operating more efficient fleets and setting new standards for transparency and performance in freight rail.

In early autumn, we opened the GATX Training Academy, Campus Lehrte, our new internal training hub for onboarding, safety, and technical development. The campus is already raising skill levels across our teams, and we look forward to opening it to the public in 2026.

This year we also welcomed Stephanie Luftensteiner as our new Chief Human Resources Officer. With her leadership, we’re continuing to put a focus on strengthening long-term people development and reinforcing a core principle of our company: that our employees are the driving force behind our growth, our service quality, and the customer experience. These investments in our people helps ensure that GATX Rail Europe remains a place where expertise can grow and innovation can thrive.

Navigating a Challenging Market
The broader rail sector faced a difficult year, with high energy costs, shifting production volumes, track-access charges, rising labor costs, and massive infrastructure restrictions and freight-traffic disruptions, while weaker output in industries such as chemicals further contributed to lower transport volumes. Sector-wide utilization fell by five to 15 percent, and leasing terms shortened as customers adapted to market uncertainty. At the same time, high electricity prices made it harder for rail to compete with road transportation in several regions, leading to shifts away from the railway, which is a trend that challenges Europe’s climate ambitions.

Debates around ECM responsibilities also intensified, with some operators seeking to shift operational accountability to wagon keepers. However, wagon keepers cannot assume operational roles within train operations—an essential principle embedded in the GCU to protect safety, clarity, and fairness. These topics will remain central to safeguarding the competitiveness of rail freight.

We have also decided to consolidate our in-house workshop and fully focus on expanding and opening our in-house workshop in Ostróda, Poland, for third parties. This also means that we will be closing our Płock location by the end of the year.

Looking Ahead to 2026: 20 Years of GATX Rail Europe
With 2026 marking the 20th anniversary of GATX Rail Europe, we look forward to celebrating the stories, people, and achievements that shaped our journey. We will use this milestone to highlight what has carried us through: our people, our partnerships, and our dedication to customers, and to connect these foundations to the innovations and investments that will shape the next 20 years.

With gratitude for your trust, partnership, and collaboration throughout 2025, Johann Feindert and the Executive Team wish all customers, partners, and colleagues a joyful holiday season and a strong start into the new year.