Bombardier wields axe over jobs

TRAIN manufacturing in the UK is set to end as the boss of Britain's last locomotive maker, Bombardier, signalled the likely closure of its famous engineering works in Derby.

News Bombardier is looking at a wholesale European overhaul, centred on the UK, comes just weeks after Britain's other remaining manufacturer, Alstom, pulled out of its Washwood Heath plant in Birmingham with the loss of 5000 jobs.

In a bombshell for Bombardier's 5000 workers here, the Canadian company's chief executive, Paul Tellier, speaking in Montreal, said he is to visit Europe next week to decide where cuts will fall.

'We've got to cut overheads. We have to rationalise all over Europe, especially where we have duplication.'

He said Bombardier was most likely to shut factories in Britain and Germany 'in the coming months' adding: 'We have huge, unused capacity and we have to address the number of facilities we have.'

Derby is most at risk because it has no work scheduled beyond next year, recently losing out to German giant Siemens for a lucrative train-building contract for the new TransPennine franchise.

Ironically, Derby, which recently finished building Virgin Cross Country's Voyager fleet, will be at its busiest for a generation with the delivery of 880 trains in the next 12 months, most of which are state-of-the-art Electrostars to replace the slam-door fleet on London commuter routes.

After that, its only contract is for 1700 London Under-ground carriages, but work on these is not scheduled until 2008 and could be done from Bombardier's German, French and Belgium plants.

A Bombardier source said that Tellier's comments about the UK 'had let the cat out of the bag'. Derek Simpson, general-secretary of trade union Amicus, said the news was 'absolutely devastating'.

Senior Bombardier UK executive Andrew Lezala, head of its Crewe-based maintenance division and a veteran from British Rail days, has quit to join rail services group Jarvis.

THE KEY DATES
BRITAIN has been the spiritual home of train manufacturing since 1803 when Richard Trevithick first used a steam loco to haul coal wagons in Wales.Derby became a rail workshops hub after George and Robert Stephenson built The Rocket, the first 30mph loco, in the 1820s.

The manufacture of rolling stock helped fuel the Industrial Revolution but the private companies only came together after the formation of British Rail Engineering Limited in 1970. When BREL was divided during privatisation, its two major manufacturing plants were split up. Washwood Heath, Birmingham went to GEC-Alsthom (later Alstom) and Litchurch Lane, Derby, was sold to Swiss-Swedish giant ABB.

The Derby site changed its name to ADtranz in 1996 after DaimlerChrysler bought in as joint venture partners. The Germans then took full control before selling to Bombardier in 2001.