Hitachi Rail Europe has completed the track that will connect its new £82 million County Durham plant — set to open later this year — to a nearby branch line, so the company can put its trains on to the inter-city network.
A strong regional engineering tradition was one of the reasons that Hitachi chose the Newton Aycliffe site in 2012 from 40 potential UK locations.
The new facility is expected to be one of The North East’s most significant industrial investments since Nissan’s arrival in 1984; it will also be the first train-manufacturing plant to be built in the UK for decades.
After coming under heavy criticism for selecting Siemens to build trains for Thameslink, ministers have tried to develop a strong UK-based rail manufacturing industry to maximise the benefit to the economy of the huge expansion taking place in the network, such as Crossrail, Thameslink and the High Speed 2 project.
The Government launched a rail industry supply chain forum in 2013 to support the UK’s small and medium-size enterprises, and last year it awarded Derby-based Bombardier a £1 billion contract to supply Crossrail trains.
Hitachi’s decision last year to move its global rail headquarters to London from Tokyo bolstered hopes that the UK was at the start
of a new rail-industry boom.
The Newton Aycliffe site, which is the Japanese company’s first European train factory, was given the go-ahead after the Government awarded Hitachi Rail Europe the £5.7 billion contract to supply the inter-city express programme — the next generation of trains for the East Coast and Great Western main lines.
Hitachi has started recruiting technicians, craftsmen and engineers who will fill most of the 730 jobs being created at the plant, ready for production to begin in January 2016. Hitachi has used a number of UK companies for its key systems and is now looking for Tier Two suppliers — a key moment for companies hoping to enter the rail sector.
More than 1,000 businesses attended one Durham supply chain event early in the project. The company said it is working with 56 suppliers in Europe; 32 of them are based in the UK.