Pavel Mazač: OLTIS Sees New Rail Opportunities in Serbia and Poland

OLTIS Group is looking for further room for growth outside the Czech and Slovak markets. In the second part of his interview with RailTarget, Pavel Mazač talks about the company’s ambitions in Poland and the Balkans, the difficulty of entering railway markets with significant development potential, and how the current decline in freight transport is affecting technology companies and their customers.

OLTIS is increasingly looking beyond the borders of the Czech Republic. Which foreign markets are currently the most interesting for you?

We are looking at opportunities outside the Czech Republic and Central Europe. And it is precisely countries that are trying to move closer to the European Union and are harmonising their regulations with European rules that represent interesting potential for us. So, for example, the Balkans are interesting for us.

A specific example is Serbia. We are part of a consortium that has won a comprehensive digitalisation project for the Serbian railway for the local infrastructure manager. Our part of the project mainly concerns communication. We are supplying a solution that covers standardised and efficient data exchange between all relevant participants in railway logistics and public administration.

The project started in the middle of this year and is expected to be completed around November 2027. The advantage is that we do not have to develop the entire solution from scratch. We have our key product, K-modul, which is already successfully used in Central Europe and the Netherlands, and we are now adapting it to the conditions of other markets.

What is most interesting about Serbia and other Balkan countries from OLTIS’s perspective?

It is mainly about the potential for the future. In the case of Serbia, it is not only about the digitalisation of the railway itself. Its connection with neighbouring countries, such as Hungary or Croatia, is also important. If the system is able to work according to European data standards, it could also help cross-border freight transport in the future.

Serbia is also investing in infrastructure modernisation and receiving support for it. This creates room for projects that perhaps would not have been possible a few years ago.

Besides the Balkans, Poland is also an important market for you. Why Poland?

It is a large market and there is a huge number of potential customers there. And they are not only railway operators. There are ports, terminals, refineries, logistics centres and industrial sidings. They all use railways, and their employees need to work with well-processed information. That is why large projects are not the only ones that interest us. We can also start with just a partial solution and gradually get into other parts of the processes in the logistics chain.

If you can connect to the infrastructure manager, it opens the door to other entities. You can then address, for example, loading and unloading, inventory records, tracking goods during production, loading, transport or temporary storage, all the way to unloading. You then also get into economic processes, invoicing or resource planning. Our goal is to gradually cover these areas more comprehensively and bring them under one roof.

Poland is a country that has invested heavily in infrastructure in recent years. Do you see this as another advantage?

In my opinion, Poland is actually more active in this respect than some other major European markets, such as Germany. There is a strong emphasis on infrastructure, transport and also defence, which makes Poland an even more interesting market. Of course, Poland’s geographical position and its proximity to the war in Ukraine also play a role.

For us, it is an advantage that OLTIS Polska, the local representation of the OLTIS Group, operates there. It helps us not only commercially, but also with service and administration.

Is it more difficult for a company to enter a foreign market than the domestic market?

Definitely. You need a local partner, knowledge of the market, administrative support and, above all, people who devote themselves to it every day. Potential customers are not satisfied if you simply call them from Olomouc twice a year and try to convince them of the quality of your product. You have to be present on the ground, monitor customers and competitors and understand what the market expects. Only then can you properly assess whether it makes sense to enter a particular country and how to do it.

So why look for opportunities in new markets at all if entering them is so complicated?

Because we objectively see further and new opportunities there. The Czech and Slovak markets are already relatively mature and, to a certain extent, saturated. In more developed countries, there is naturally also more competition. In a market that is only undergoing modernisation or is just before it, you can be involved in the change from the very beginning. If there is pressure to digitalise and modernise the railway, it can mean interesting opportunities for us.

You are trying to expand at a time when European freight rail is not doing particularly well. How do you view the current situation?

European freight rail is indeed going through a difficult period. Transport volumes are declining and the structure of commodities is also changing. The phase-out of fossil fuels and the problems of the European automotive industry, for example, play a major role. I think the railway has to transform. Combined and intermodal transport will become more important, as will new commodities, such as waste. In any case, rail has to become an integral part of the entire transport chain.

Is this crisis also affecting OLTIS?

Our customers have lower revenues and are therefore more cautious about investments in information technologies. At the same time, information systems can help increase efficiency precisely in such a situation.

If you have fewer shipments and need to reduce costs, you have to look at where you can simplify and automate processes. And that is precisely where we see our role. It is not about simply supplying another piece of software. We want to help the railway operate more efficiently and become better integrated into the entire supply chain.

Can digitalisation therefore really help freight rail get out of this situation?

It can help with efficiency. Digitalisation itself, of course, will not solve all the problems of freight rail. It cannot create new shipments where there is no demand.

But it can help make better use of resources, work with information more quickly and connect the individual participants in the transport chain. If rail is looking for new commodities and new ways of transporting them, it also needs high-quality data and the ability to respond quickly.

Will you also have to respond to this as a technology company?

Our goal is to gradually connect the individual parts of the railway world. Data should not be entered several times in different places, but once and then be available in real time wherever it is needed. This includes transport planning, dispatching processes, work with wagons, operational data and the economic side. The better these areas are connected, the greater the effect we can bring to the customer.

OLTIS Group will have a presence at InnoTrans. Which events can we meet you at next year?

In 2027, we want to participate in various events not only in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. One of the highlights will then be the “transport logistic 2027” trade fair in Munich.

This year’s InnoTrans is important for us primarily as a place where we can show where we are heading, reach existing and new customers and receive feedback. We will also present some of our solutions. We will be happy if you visit us at booth 4.1/430.