Transport Secretary Justine Greening today announced that Agility Trains, a consortium made up of Hitachi and John Laing, will replace Britain’s Intercity 125 trains with new higher capacity modern trains under a £4.5bn contract.
Hitachi will assemble an intercity fleet of 92 complete trains at the planned factory in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, which is estimated to cost £50m to build.
Construction at the site is expected to begin in 2013 and will be fully operational by 2015.
Hitachi will also locate its European rail research and development capabilities on the site which will further enhance the factory’s ability to win rail contracts across Europe.
The Japanese manufacturing giant also aims to build maintenance depots in Bristol, Swansea, west London and Doncaster, and will upgrade existing maintenance depots throughout Britain.
Greening said: “A new train factory is fantastic news for Britain and will be welcomed by everyone who wants to see a thriving UK manufacturing sector.
“It means 730 new skilled jobs created at the factory, 200 jobs in constructing the plant and thousands of jobs secured in the supply chain.
“Hitachi is the latest major international company to invest on this scale in Britain and I look forward to this new factory in County Durham following in the footsteps of Nissan’s successful car plant in Sunderland.”