ALEXANDER Dennis has secured around £65 million of work as part of Stagecoach Group's biggest ever bus and coach order.
Perth based Stagecoach said it is spending £102m on new fleet this year which will provide it with close to 570 additional vehicles to put on the road.
Within that Alexander Dennis, which is understood to have grown its turnover by around 10% to £530m in 2013, will build more than 470 vehicles over the next 12 months including double deck, single deck, midi and hybrid-electric buses and eight luxury coaches.
Although no new jobs will be created the large order is likely to support the jobs of the 900 Alexander Dennis staff in Falkirk as well as hundreds more at facilities in Scarborough and Guildford.
Alexander Dennis chief executive Colin Robertson said: "This is another massive boost for the whole of the bus manufacturing sector and from [our] perspective I am delighted that we have again won the lion's share of the new business.
"We have worked closely with Stagecoach over many years to ensure that we design, engineer and build class-leading products that set the pace in terms of fuel economy, passenger comfort and operator benefits, and this order is a further endorsement of our market-leading product range."
Stagecoach's London operations are getting a £21m fleet of hybrid buses with the remainder of the new fleet being put into use outside the English capital.
That includes 17 new megabus coaches and three sleeper fitted megabus gold vehicles for its low cost intercity service.
Other companies which won orders were Belgian company Van Hool, Leeds based Optare and Northern Ireland's Wrightbus.
Chief executive Martin Griffiths said: "This record investment is a major boost for UK jobs in manufacturing and many other smaller businesses in the supply chain.
"It is also a huge vote of confidence in the future of bus and coach travel in Britain."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article