Rail joints, also called rail fishplates, are important railway fasteners used to connect any two rail tracks. It is a metal bar bolted to the ends of two rail tracks to join them together. In general, it mostly used in light rail, heavy rail and crane rail.

With the properties of corrosion resistance, non-rust, ultraviolet-proof and insulation, the rail joints become more and more important in the transportation of railway system. Besides, it always contains many other properties such as high hardness and good thermal stability.

Every country has its own requirement standard of rail fishplate. The following is the standard of China:

  • Standard: TB/T2345-2008
  • Material: 55#
  • Type: 43kg, 50kg, 60kg and 75kg

The following is the standard for exporting to North America:

  • Standard: AREMA2010
  • Material: 50#
  • Type: 115RE, 119RE, 132RE, 136RE and 141RE

Today, there are so many Chinese suppliers exporting different kinds of products to North America such as the Jinstar in Suzhou whose total export volume can reach 96748.40kg per year which worth about €60,467.75 and so on. These companies manufacture different kinds of railway fishplates and also export to so many countries and regions, especially to some developed regions in North America.

According to the analysis of railway fishplate market from 2009 to 2014, the development of the railway fishplate market is becoming more and more important. By the end of 2014, the sales of exports to overseas reached $251,334,709 with a growth rate of 15.54%.

As to the industrial output of normal fishplate industry in China, it reached ¥758,740 with a growth rate of 11.39%. And until 2014, the total weight of exporting to North America reached about 76,186,853 kg with total sales of $3140, 881. Through the data, we can easily see that the railway fishplate is becoming more and more popular, especially in North America.

In North America, the government procurement is mostly used to meet the requirement of the daily administrative activities. According to the legal ways and the use of national financial capital and government borrowing, the government departments always buy some services through the market. There are various methods of government procurement, such as open competitive bidding, competitive negotiation and so on, in some places e-procurement is also widely used.

For Canada, the government procurement is also widely used in the daily administrative activities, but it has some restricted conditions. Three typical organisations are set up to ensure the safety and fairness of the government procurement: one is purchasing demand sector (central or local government departments), one is executive arm (the procurement of each province commission), the other is financial sector, which is in charge of reviewing and approving the procurement funds.