Hitachi Signs On Dotted Line

May 13, 2014

Our managing director, Richard Carr, travelled to Hitachi Rail Europe’s Newton Aycliffe facility on Friday to put pen to paper on a contract for two Mechan traversers.

The County Durham-based factory is building high speed trains for the Intercity Express Programme and will be using the traversers – one inside and one outside – to move the vehicles between roads. Both machines will be manufactured at our Sheffield headquarters for installation in spring next year.

We are no strangers to Hitachi’s UK operations, having supplied equipment previously to the Ashford and North Pole (west London) depots. We have also recently secured an order from Volker Fitzpatrick to provide equipment drops at the Stoke Gifford facility, again for spring 2015 delivery.

Darren Cumner, manufacturing plant manager for Hitachi Rail Europe, said: “As part of the build project for our factory, we conducted an extensive and competitive tendering process for these two traversers, given their importance to production. This process reaffirmed we were already working with a partner who can match our expectations on quality and reliability.”