Alexander Dennis proposes plant shutdowns

[Shaw S Hunter]

One factor might be that for deliveries to England of electric vehicles the distance must be often greater than the range of the batteries, requiring long stops en-route for recharging.

How many vehicles are actually driven for delivery? Lots of pictures around of new vehicles on low-loaders. This seems to be a growing niche in the haulage arena, might it expand still further?

 

[delt1c]

shows how shoet sighted the tory privatisation of public transport was .

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

So we have a long estabished scottish coach builder closed , just after grangemouth. this is the result of deregulation where operators have ignorned the local comunities and gone to ensure the profiteering of the directors over the local communitee. Lets get public transport back to the benifit of the public. we have seen the bleeding of money to private operators and chassis building to overseas companies , the result is the strarvation of local communitees. w2hen will we see the true effects of captalisation. i await to be shot down by those wanting to profiteer over those less fortunate

Allow me...

The fact is that it has nothing to do with deregulation, privatisation or anything else. Remember when the majority of London buses were AECs that were bodied by Park Royal. AEC was closed by a nationalised British Leyland in 1979, and Park Royal was closed in 1980. Bristol Commercial Vehicles was closed in 1983, Guy Motors ceased bus production in 1972 (and closed the factory outright in 1982) - again under BL control. Daimler ceased production in Coventry in 1973, with production moving to Farington.

Ask yourself why these nationalised concerns were closed, and long before 1986?

 

[GusB]

So we have a long estabished scottish coach builder closed , just after grangemouth. this is the result of deregulation where operators have ignorned the local comunities and gone to ensure the profiteering of the directors over the local communitee. Lets get public transport back to the benifit of the public. we have seen the bleeding of money to private operators and chassis building to overseas companies , the result is the strarvation of local communitees. w2hen will we see the true effects of captalisation. i await to be shot down by those wanting to profiteer over those less fortunate

Why are you blaming de-regulation which, let's face it, happened nearly forty years ago? To put things into perspective, forty years prior to that it was 1946, when the country was in a very different (and difficult) situation.

Alexander and Dennis as separate concerns didn't really fare too badly out of de-regulation, did they? Until then Alexander was mostly reliant on large orders from the likes of the Scottish Bus Group, a few municipals and some overseas orders; after de-regulation/privatisation Alexander products were far more widely sold within the UK. Without a doubt, Dennis's success story was the Dart; a product born out of de-regulation and the desire on the part of operators to have smaller, cheaper vehicles to run in a more competitive environment.

What both companies had in common was the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions and they had to do so in order to survive. There have been several bumps in the road since then but the combined entity of Alexander Dennis is still with us.

A few years on, market conditions have changed again and the company is having to do what can to survive. I'm as unhappy about the closure of the Scottish plants as you are and I hoped that the company would find another solution. 400 jobs lost is a lot for one area to bear, but it's 22% of the UK workforce*; would you rather that a larger number of people were put out of work elsewhere in order to keep Falkirk and Larbert going?

* Source: https://www.route-one.net/news/alexander-dennis-plans-falkirk-closure-and-larbert-suspension/

A consultation on the plans puts up to 400 jobs at risk, which is around 22% of the Alexander Dennis workforce.

Allow me...

The fact is that it has nothing to do with deregulation, privatisation or anything else. Remember when the majority of London buses were AECs that were bodied by Park Royal. AEC was closed by a nationalised British Leyland in 1979, and Park Royal was closed in 1980. Bristol Commercial Vehicles was closed in 1983, Guy Motors ceased bus production in 1972 (and closed the factory outright in 1982) - again under BL control. Daimler ceased production in Coventry in 1973, with production moving to Farington.

Ask yourself why these nationalised concerns were closed, and long before 1986?

We also have to ask whether Alexander Dennis would be a thing at all had all those plants not been closed. While you didn't specifically mention Eastern Coach Works in your list, closure of that plant (and Volvo's decision to stop body production at Workington) was no doubt instrumental in ensuring that Alexander kept going.

 

[VioletEclipse]

Allow me...

The fact is that it has nothing to do with deregulation, privatisation or anything else. Remember when the majority of London buses were AECs that were bodied by Park Royal. AEC was closed by a nationalised British Leyland in 1979, and Park Royal was closed in 1980. Bristol Commercial Vehicles was closed in 1983, Guy Motors ceased bus production in 1972 (and closed the factory outright in 1982) - again under BL control. Daimler ceased production in Coventry in 1973, with production moving to Farington.

Ask yourself why these nationalised concerns were closed, and long before 1986?

This really is a stark reminder of how many manufacurers there used to be compared to how few there now are. Who knows what the future will be like.

 

[stevieinselby]

But I think they are only doing what they have to do to preserve some manufacturing capacity. What I take from the NFI statement is that they believe that, if the Government is providing funding for electric buses, they should be restricted to only being able to buy from British manufacturers. Which I find hard to argue against - why should taxpayers money enrich China?

Anyone remember British Leyland? When customers were restricted to home-made cars, they were paying over-the-odds for cars of a poor standard.
We have a duty to get best value when spending public money. If ADL vehicles are more expensive and of a lower standard than Yutong and BYD, why should taxpayers' money be wasted on an overpriced inferior product when it could be made to go much further and get something better at the same time?

Optare withdrew from the UK market because they weren't selling any buses, largely because they hadn't invested in developing the products and what they were selling was tired and out-of-date. Should we have forced Zebra-funded operators to buy Optares with 10-year-old technology instead of up-to-date BYDs and Yutongs? If not, why does ADL get treated differently?

But if there is a restriction, Chinese manufacturers could set up bases over here. In much the same way as a major Chinese car manufacturer (I forget which one) is setting up a base in Europe to met EU restrictions. Ok, so profits will go back to China, but at least it will provide employment and knock-on benefits to Britain.

Which one is it? The UK isn't in the EU any more, so there is little reason for a Chinese manufacturer to set up a base in the UK to access the EU market – more likely that they would set up a base in the EU (as BYD is doing in Hungary) in order to get better access to that market. So that's no better, from your point of view, why should British taxpayers' money be spent enriching Hungary, or any other EU country?

 

[Resuwen]

If we had joined up thinking, a publicly owned operator like Lothian would put in a big order for ADL vehicles

 

[Mikey C]

Interesting that shutting Falkirk and mothballing Larbert would only put 22% of their workforce at risk, I'd have thought it would have been higher. I guess Scarborough has had high bus output for many years, going back to the Pointer bodied Dart.

What does Larbert do, as opposed to Falkirk? Obviously bad news for Scotland, but then previous they've closed the Guildford "Dennis" factory, the ex Northern Counties factory in Wigan plus the Alexander factory in Belfast. Indeed this leaves no factories left from either Alexander or Dennis...

 

[EMU303]

We have a duty to get best value when spending public money. If ADL vehicles are more expensive and of a lower standard than Yutong and BYD, why should taxpayers' money be wasted on an overpriced inferior product when it could be made to go much further and get something better at the same time?

I agree on quality which is clearly a key, if not the top factor in deciding on a suppliers product, but if the product is heavily subsidised then that clearly has an impact on the final decision. It may well be that the Chinese product is of sufficiently superior quality than ADL regardless of price, but if the balance is tipped in favour due to Chinese government subsidy/ paying sweat shop labour rates to gain market share / destroy UK jobs, then I don’t think it’s a simple black/white choice. The same thing may happen to Wrights and the UK car industry over time.

But I don’t blame bus operators for seeking the best price/quality available, and I’m not making any apology for shortfalls in ADL management or product quality.

 

[GCH100]

There are a number of issues I can see, first of all the bus market has declined year on year from its heyday in the early-mid 1950's, that requires fewer vehicles to be built, as said before the import of Chinese vehicles, and the fact the Scottish plants aren't as central to the UK as Scarborough would be and the need to recharge vehicles all adds up to the problems faced by ADL, plus you also have a year when many large operators have placed large orders with Wrightbus as well, really ADL's main issue has been that its had too many plants since its formation, it has already closed Wigan and Guildford since formation and on the problems at Transbus closed Belfast, Wrightbus has only one plant, so efficiency is obviously needed, and it is a great shame but sadly no suprise that the Scottish plants have to close, lets also not forget that Scarborough has been refitted for buses, and expanded since the Plaxton coach range was shelved, that I think sadly Plaxton will never re-appear, as Yutong has largely now with Mercedes-Benz taken about 75%-80% of the UK coach market between them, very little else is sold.

 

[acsnottingham]

Would be good if the case but unfortunately we have local government controlled bus operations buying from abroad - Nottingham being a key example.

Even Manchester too Volvos that came across on a boat so wouldn’t be a silver bullet without legislation changes

It’s easy to blame ‘the Chinese’ but which manufacturer was it that got into bed with BYD? That’ll be ADL. And their offer to Nottingham when they were procuring their electric buses was ADL/BYD. ADL have ignored their big issue for years which is that the quality of their work and product is poor. Why would Nottingham, who have 143 ADL bodied gas buses, 62 E400s and had 40 odd E200s in the last decade suddenly abandon them? Why would they sell 5 year old ADL buses this year? Why have they gone to Wright’s for new deckers this year? Many operators have received their buses late from ADL and some of their electrics for Harrogate had to go back to be rebuilt, so bad was the quality. It’s also ironic that ADL have made a big thing about selling their buses overseas, but seem to think they should be protected from anyone selling into the UK. It’s a great shame to see a British manufacturer decline, but this is primarily in their court. They’ve taken their eye off the ball and others, including Wright’s, have taken advantage.

 

[joieman]

Why would Nottingham, who have 143 ADL bodied gas buses, 62 E400s and had 40 odd E200s in the last decade suddenly abandon them? Why would they sell 5 year old ADL buses this year?

The ADL buses that got sold were being replaced by electric buses, and ADL didn't have anything the right size at the time.

 

[Swimbar]

Didn't I just hear on the BBC news that ADL production is moving to Scarborough ?

ADL production is already in Scarborough!!

 

[overthewater]

Its very nasty shock and comes off the back of the Grangemouth closure, Falkirk isn't going to be good place for the time being.

 

[DunsBus]

Allow me...

The fact is that it has nothing to do with deregulation, privatisation or anything else. Remember when the majority of London buses were AECs that were bodied by Park Royal. AEC was closed by a nationalised British Leyland in 1979, and Park Royal was closed in 1980. Bristol Commercial Vehicles was closed in 1983, Guy Motors ceased bus production in 1972 (and closed the factory outright in 1982) - again under BL control. Daimler ceased production in Coventry in 1973, with production moving to Farington.

Ask yourself why these nationalised concerns were closed, and long before 1986?

And then, post-deregulation, Leyland being privatised in 1987, tben Volvo buying Leyland in 1988 and realising it had bought a basket case. It was perhaps no surprise that Volvo would eventually put Leyland out of its misery by 1993.

 

[FlybeDash8Q400]

If we had joined up thinking, a publicly owned operator like Lothian would put in a big order for ADL vehicles

And how on earth would this work? Lothian who have a 99% Volvo fleet all of a sudden switching to ADL products? Remember ADL don’t body Volvo stuff anymore and soon (if not already) they won’t body anything that’s not their own chassis’.

I’m not sure what your idea is, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense logistically or financially.

If any operator had a chance to keep it going, it’s Stagecoach. They’re about all that’s left in terms of the big players now that would order the EV’s. Them themselves though is not enough and that has proven itself by this situation occurring. Not enough London orders either.

 

[GusB]

If we had joined up thinking, a publicly owned operator like Lothian would put in a big order for ADL vehicles

It's not that simple. Since the demise of Leyland, Lothian has dabbled with other manufacturers but since then it has shown a preference for Volvo products. If you have a preference for one particular platform and your local bodybuilder decides that it doesn't want to build on it, you go elsewhere; why else would Lothian have switched to Wright and MCV for bodywork over the years?

Any bus operator will have to do the maths when purchasing new buses, publicly-owned or not, and it'll have to show its shareholders that it's getting value for money. That means examining the whole-life costs of a vehicle as well as the cheapest purchase price.

Yutong has largely now with Mercedes-Benz taken about 75%-80% of the UK coach market between them

Would you mind providing the source for your figures? You may be correct, but I'd rather see where you're getting the data from.

 

[Intro298]

So we have a long estabished scottish coach builder closed , just after grangemouth. this is the result of deregulation where operators have ignorned the local comunities and gone to ensure the profiteering of the directors over the local communitee. Lets get public transport back to the benifit of the public. we have seen the bleeding of money to private operators and chassis building to overseas companies , the result is the strarvation of local communitees. w2hen will we see the true effects of captalisation. i await to be shot down by those wanting to profiteer over those less fortunate

Wrightbus is another UK bus manufacturer that's thriving. The fact is ADL are currently making subpar buses, with longer delivery times than the competition, questionable build quality, and higher prices, it comes to no surprise to me that they aren't doing well. Hopefully they'll be able to turn things around like Wright have managed to do, but ADL have dug a hole for themselves with their current offering.

 

[buslad1988]

If we had joined up thinking, a publicly owned operator like Lothian would put in a big order for ADL vehicles

It’s a very dangerous game if the government started dictating what municipal operators can/can’t buy simply because of politics and where buses are built.

It’s up to the operator what they deem suitable and appropriate for their requirements and you go the manufacturer who can offer the best deal for the price.

Have Blackpool even sorted out the mess of their electric order yet? Wasn’t that due to all go to ADL?

 

[Metal Mickey]

Prior to the introduction of vehicles having to be specified as low-floor, The Volvo Ailsa and Volvo Citybus on the R type body and Volvo B10M/PS, IMO, were some of the best vehicles ever produced. That was when they were known as Walter Alexander Coachbuilders.

It seems to me in the last 25 years, or since the merger with Dennis, they have gradually went downhill in terms of quality and it’s possible that the partnership with BYD was the last straw.

 

[Leyland Bus]

I think one thing that has been missed from all the other very good points above is Bus Grant. At one point 50% of the cost of a new OPO vehicle was subsidised by the government. (I don't think Zebra is anywhere near as generous?) Perhaps it can be said that this kept all those plants on artificial life support and without it, all this would have likely come about much much sooner??

 

[Man of Kent]

I think one thing that has been missed from all the other very good points above is Bus Grant. At one point 50% of the cost of a new OPO vehicle was subsidised by the government. (I don't think Zebra is anywhere near as generous?) Perhaps it can be said that this kept all those plants on artificial life support and without it, all this would have likely come about much much sooner??

New Bus Grant was last available in 1983/84, by which time it had been reduced to 10%.
ZEBRA pays 75% of the difference between the cost of an electric bus and a comparable diesel (but up to 75% of total fixed infrastructure costs).

 

[Dwarfer1979]

Unfortunately this decision appears to have been taken by the foreign owners with regard to their unreasonable chip on their shoulder (unfair foreign competition to our foreign owned business) rather than a cool headed analysis of how they got to where they are and where the future may be. If you were being generous you could say that ADL got unlucky in timing of decisions (without knowing exactly what went on behind the decision to break the partnership with BYD and who knew what when about it ending) it is difficult to place the blame but to an extent ADL paid the price for being early-ish to the electric bus market so by the time ZEBRA funding was launched they had a slightly old design with a below average operational range and by the time they launched their new generation integral electrics they had missed out on a lot of orders (the E400EV has done quite well on sales regardless and if the E200EV had been available earlier it is clear they would have had more there as well). As a passenger I have been fairly impressed with the E400EVs I have travelled on (several versions with several operators) so I can't myself see why they get all the hate and I think there is a perception around ADL that mean that things that happen with other manufacturers is treated as uniquely ADL (we had to get our Yutongs, pretty early ones, looked at after they entered service due to some minor features that were causing us issues, similar in category to some of the stuff being talked about around the ADLs, they were rectified quickly and they were widely reported but these things happen and no one is perfect).

Looking forward they are pretty dominant for diesels now as competitors fall away, it is basically between them and Volvo now for most orders (& at the small end with the second ending of Optare they are only competing with actual van based minibuses) and whilst Wright are still present for diesels there are quite a few operators who have been burned before and wary of returning, though by its nature this is a declining market there are still a few years left. Now, or at least once the E200EV is actually launched, their electric bus range is complete, competitive in terms of reported range and capacity and for the bus sector is a full as anyone which is a strong position to be in for future orders (I'm assuming there will be new rounds of ZEBRA type schemes as there are a lot of depots & operators still without electrics and the set up costs are such that without some form of government support they are never going to be able to get widespread implementation within any deadline they are talking about with decimating small town bus networks) and lots of operators with traditional experience and built relationships with ADL but none with the Chinese manufacturers that they could target. The risk with just concentrating on Scarborough is that it may be OK for their current volumes, which can be attributed to a short-term issue in what range was available supressing demand for a period, but may restrict their ability to recover their old market position as they will not be able to match the delivery timescales of competitors (this is part of what led to the growth of the Volvo EvoRa compared to the E200MMC as Volvo could quote delivery timescales half that of ADL but that had evened out recently). You worry that this is the start of ADL going the way of Optare, weakening their presence in their core market until they decline to a niche player and then essentially withdraw and use their experience in wider international markets.

 

[Hyebone]

Yes it's a shame, but it makes no sense for operators to procure inferior vehicles simply because they're made in Britain.

 

[Mwanesh]

So we have a long estabished scottish coach builder closed , just after grangemouth. this is the result of deregulation where operators have ignorned the local comunities and gone to ensure the profiteering of the directors over the local communitee. Lets get public transport back to the benifit of the public. we have seen the bleeding of money to private operators and chassis building to overseas companies , the result is the strarvation of local communitees. w2hen will we see the true effects of captalisation. i await to be shot down by those wanting to profiteer over those less fortunate

Even the municipals are buying from abroad.Why should the residents be held to ransom paying over the odds for things you can get somewhere.What happened to British Leyland

 

[Towers]

Even the municipals are buying from abroad.Why should the residents be held to ransom paying over the odds for things you can get somewhere.What happened to British Leyland

And this is the story of the western world. We can make things ourselves and pay for it, or we can import everything cheaply and leave ourselves entirely dependent on other, sometimes hostile parts of the world. Whatever one might think of ADL and its recent/current output, it is undeniably a shame to see the influx of ‘made in China’ infiltrating the British bus industry, just as it does pretty much everything else. At the same time that cars containing certain Chinese components are being banned from certain sensitive sites and one particular Chinese tech manufacturer is prohibited from holding government contracts. Ho hum.

 

[Wymondham]

It's quite interesting to me that the issues Alexander Dennis are having (long lead times and poor quality) seem to directly mirror the issues that New Flyer (which is effectively AD's parent company) is having in North America.

 

[tramboy]

The ADL buses that got sold were being replaced by electric buses, and ADL didn't have anything the right size at the time.

Surely the question that should be asked is that why 13 year old Solos were retained in the fleet and the considerably newer ADLs were sold, rather than being cascaded as an operator would normally do? That suggests some dissatisfaction with the product.

And this is the story of the western world. We can make things ourselves and pay for it, or we can import everything cheaply and leave ourselves entirely dependent on other, sometimes hostile parts of the world. Whatever one might think of ADL and its recent/current output, it is undeniably a shame to see the influx of ‘made in China’ infiltrating the British bus industry, just as it does pretty much everything else. At the same time that cars containing certain Chinese components are being banned from certain sensitive sites and one particular Chinese tech manufacturer is prohibited from holding government contracts. Ho hum.

And yet we don't question the influx of Swedish made, Egyptian bodied vehicles in the same way? Nor do we question the fully integral European made vehicles that have also appeared on the market.

ADL have walked themselves into a situation of being "oversized" for their order book - and the size of their order book is related to their build quality and aftersales support. Wrightbus, who have been through this situation, have learnt from their demise and are a different business - focussed on build quality etc. with an order book that reflects the difference.

Operators want a product that is built well, works out of the box and is rapidly supported if something should go wrong. Manufacturers who can achieve that are seeing the industry place orders with them. You can but hope that New Flyer use the opportunity to learn the same lesson at ADL in this situation.

 

[GCH100]

One of ADL's downfalls according to the local MP, is the lack of Scottish orders coming through for ADL vehicles, especially with there latest Scottish Bus Grant were only a small number of buses were odered from ADL, indead ADL's biggest customer is TfGM's Bee Network in Manchester, and if that is the case it makes no sense to have a factory in Scotland, and to have it closer to the markets in Scarborough, as presumably other of the new PTE's will order their buses from ADL, the majority of which are in Northern England. In the past Stagecoach was the big customer, and still is a large customer, but they have started looking elsewhere for orders since German ownership. Wrightbus is doing very well because there product range is superior, even though the basic bodywork design of their double-decker dates back to 2001 and is still going strong, despite several revised front and rear ends.

Also superior is the new Volvo BZL buses that are very comfortable and don't rattle at all. Although somewhere ADL lost the plot was there Coach range being discontinued, instead of modernised and developed. Also the decision to build the ADL E100EV in China can't have helped but presumably it was a competive decision in order to benefit from lower labour costs, and therefore offer either a cheaper product or offer a greater profit margin, or both.

There also seems very few ADL E200's entering service at the moment and this has been another issue, with larger operators turning to Yutong for saloon's and smaller operators turning to Volvo Bus/MCV, that surely indicates issues with that model, and maybe its time its sucessor was brought in sooner rather than later.

 

[joieman]

Surely the question that should be asked is that why 13 year old Solos were retained in the fleet and the considerably newer ADLs were sold, rather than being cascaded as an operator would normally do? That suggests some dissatisfaction with the product.

I believe the said Solos will also be replaced by electric buses shortly. Hence, there wouldn't have been any point in reallocating the MMCs.