Wrightbus will restart full production at its Ballymena plant in January and has already secured nearly half of the order target that the newly rescued business set itself for 2020.
Speaking to Buses in early December, chief executive Buta Atwal said: ‘The good news is that customers and suppliers and associated bodies are rooting for Wrightbus to do well.’ Within six weeks of industrialist Jo Bamford’s Bamford Bus Company acquiring the UK’s second biggest bus builder out of administration, he says it is performing better than predicted.
‘We have got a number of orders in from major customers,’ he says, enabling Wrightbus to restart production in January. ‘I’m very happy with next year’s outlook.’
Before running into its two final years of financial difficulty, he says Wrightbus was historically a profitable and sound manufacturing business with good design credentials and a reputation for quality and flexibility, and that it can recover that reputation.
From just 50 out of over 1,100 employees left in the business when Bamford acquired it on 22 October, Atwal says around 150 were employed on site by December, as it cranked up the recruitment of coachbuilders, welders, paint prep and spray painters, as…
