NEWS
Wrights — Robert Wright & Son as the company was then known — had ambitions of becoming a significant player in the bus market long before these were realised.
In 1969, it responded to an invitation to tender for a major Ulsterbus order for single- and double-deck bodies but had to wait another 13 years before securing its first small order from the state-owned operator in Northern Ireland and it took 32 years before it entered the double-deck market with the Eclipse Gemini.
Three defining moves helped the company grow in the bus market. One, in the late-1970s, was to become a licensee for the Alusuisse M5438 bolted aluminium structural system that allowed it to build robust bodywork to a high standard of precision. It later adapted this technology into its own structural system called Aluminique.
The second, following a fire in November 1989, was to relocate the business within Ballymena to a larger site on the Galgorm Industrial Estate, creating the space for substantial expansion over the next 20 years.
This was its springboard into becoming a volume builder of buses.
The third was for William Wright to be one of the first UK bus builders to recognise that the industry would move to low-floor…
