The UNISIG Consortium (UNISIG) is pleased to announce its acceptance, with effect from 1 January 2010, of an application for associated membership from MERMEC.

MERMEC, based in Monopoli, Bari, Italy, is a developer and supplier of onboard and trackside railway signalling equipment. The company becomes the second new associated member of UNISIG since its formation in 1999.

The full members of UNISIG are Alstom Transport, Ansaldo STS, Bombardier Transportation, Invensys Rail Group, Siemens Mobility and Thales Rail Signalling Solutions. AŽD Praha became the first associated member of UNISIG on 1 January 2009.

“On behalf of the UNISIG partners I warmly welcome MERMEC as our second associated member,” says Dr Maurizio Rosi of Ansaldo STS, chairman of the UNISIG Steering Committee. “We are all looking forward to working with experts from MERMEC in the various UNISIG activities during this year and, hopefully, for many years in the future.”

Silvano Brandi, CEO of the MERMEC Group, said: “I am very proud that MERMEC has been accepted into the group of leading world companies developing ERTMS/ETCS technical specifications. We are investing considerable resources in research and development and we are fully committed to bringing all our best ideas and contribution to the UNISIG Consortium. We are ready to actively contribute and to do our share in making interoperability across European railway networks a reality.”

UNISIG was founded in 1999 at the specific request of the EU Commission with the task of drafting the technical specifications for ERTMS/ETCS. It has always been a purely technical body first working in close co-operation with the European Association for Railway Interoperability and, since its formation in 2005, with the European Railway Agency. The majority of the detailed ETCS technical specifications have been produced by, and still today are being maintained and updated by, UNISIG under the leadership of the ERTMS unit of the ERA as part of the ERTMS change control management (CCM) process.