WEGH Group, Italy, has announced the €22m acquisition of IPA Ferroviaria, a fellow Italian manufacturer of track infrastructure components including sleepers and slabs for conventional and high-speed railways. Wegh says the acquisition will increase the company’s know-how and offer greater synergies in the supplier’s offer to the market. The company has managed IPA Ferroviaria under a lease agreement for the past nine years, which included a strong emphasis on research and development resulting in securing numerous patents as well as the renewal of production facilities. This process culminated in the outright acquisition. Among the products offered by IPA are pre-stressed reinforced concrete sleepers, sleepers for switches, and slabs for ballast-less track systems. The acquisition follows Wegh Group’s purchase of IPA International in 2018, a supplier of slab track systems based in Bergamo following a similar six-year lease agreement.