US-based railcar company Greenbrier is one of the latest American companies to be moving or building their regional Headquarters in Riyadh, the company said, as it looks to profit off the opportunities presented by the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 economic and social reform plans.
The NYSE-listed Greenbrier is one of 24 companies that have recently agreed to the Kingdom’s requirements that companies doing business with the government relocate or establish their regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia in order to do work on government contracts.
Saudi Arabia is looking to bring up to 500 international companies to Riyadh following February’s announcement that the Kingdom will stop signing contracts with foreign companies from 2024 unless their regional headquarters are locally based.
“A number of the goals outlined in Vision 2030 are in line with the products and services the Greenbrier Companies have to offer. We are confident we can help Saudi Arabia achieve these goals and support other GCC countries from here and that’s why we chose Riyadh as our regional headquarters,” Jack Isselmann, Greenbrier senior vice president for external communications, told Arab News.
Isselmann told Arab News that he was “confident” that the company would be able to meet the needs of Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning railway sector, and that the rail sector in the Kingdom is crucial in expanding the mining sector as the third pillar of the Saudi economy, behind oil and petrochemicals.
“Rail is also essential to transforming the Kingdom into a global logistics hub. Overreliance on trucks for overland logistics is an impediment to the Kingdom achieving this goal. Rail is four times more fuel efficient than trucks, and every train takes literally hundreds of trucks off of the roads. This makes driving safer for Saudi families, and it reduces the heavy cost of repairing roads damaged by a constant stream of trucks,” he added.
The company did not provide figures on how many staff will be located in Riyadh, and negotiations are still ongoing regarding the new office location, but Isselmann said that Greenbrier already has a technical team in Jubail and will soon ramp up operations in Riyadh, according to the report.
Vision 2030 has brought with it renewed focus on mining and logistics, and rail is a critical enabler of those industries.
