Benefits of two bus orders arriving at once

For Ballymena-based Wrightbus, it’s a long time since the autumn of 2019, when the bus manufacturer dissolved into a messy liquidation and 1,000 jobs were lost. It could have been a sorry end for a long-standing family-owned business that was well able to compete internationally, most notably as supplier of a fleet of double-decker “Boris buses” to London when the British prime minister was the city’s mayor.

But salvation came at the end of a tricky few months from JCB heir and hydrogen evangelist Jo Bamford, who entered the Ballymena fray with none of the baggage that can surround life in the North (more of this later), and set about turning the company around. When he became owner that year, just 45 of the previous employees remained but, within two years, he was seeking to bring the jobs total back close to the 1,000 mark as new orders for hydrogen and electric double-deckers started to build. Customers included Bus Éireann.

Recent weeks have brought even more evidence of Bamford’s strategically lucky streak, with Wrightbus signing a deal to supply up to 60 of its Hydroliner buses to a German bus operator. This came on the heels of a deal with an Australian bus body builder to supply hydrogen power technology. It all looks like very good news for Bamford and Ballymena, although interpretations of this have differed in the North.

Sinn Féin vice-president and first minister designate of the Northern Ireland Assembly Michelle O’Neill said the German order displayed “the benefits that our continued access to the EU single market is yielding for local business, our economy and jobs”. Ian Paisley, the DUP MP for the Ballymena area, was meanwhile quoted in the Belfast-based Newsletter this week labelling O’Neill’s position as “fantasy”. As long as Sinn Féin ignored “the problems caused by the [Northern Ireland] protocol to the UK single market — Wrightbus’s biggest trading relationship — the opportunity to grow and succeed will not be fully realised,” he told the title.