Hopes are rising that Hitachi Rail Europe is on the verge of winning a £600m train building contract that could safeguard hundreds of jobs in the North East.
The train manufacturer has been reported to be the favourite to win a contract with Dutch rail firm Abellio to build trains for the East Midlands Railway.
After being awarded the franchise in April, Abellio began a tender process to build the rolling stock required to operate the service. Its plan is to introduce faster, modern and refurbished trains across the whole of the network, as well as bring in an electric train service between London, Luton Airport, and Corby.
Abellio has yet to reveal which company will build its new fleet of trains but reports have claimed that the company is preparing to snub Derby’s Bombardier in favour of Hitachi. It is expected that the winner will be revealed within the next week.
If true the contract will help secure around 700 jobs at Hitachi’s site in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.
Hitachi declined to comment on whether it has been given the contract.
The train company originally unveiled its plans to build its train factory in County Durham back in 2015, since when it has won contracts to build a fleet of trains for Scottish Rail and the Azuma trains for LNER.
However, work has been slowing at the factory as Hitachi moves closer to completing its orders and after its current workload is finished the site does not have any further contracts in the pipeline.
The lack of pipeline work has left jobs at the plant hanging in the balance, with Hitachi hoping the Abellio contract - as well as bids for work building trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro, and the HS2 project - will maintain employment levels.
While Hitachi currently employs around 700 people at its North East base, the figure was much higher at the start of the current contracts’ life cycle. Due to the nature of the work the company employs some of its workers on temporary contracts and lets them go when needed. The last time this happened was in December 2018 when 150 workers’ contracts were not renewed.
The reports are, however, would be bad news for Bombardier, which employs around 1,600 workers in Derby.
