Member Article

North East on track for local motion after rail conference hailed a success

Over 100 businesses from across the region attended a recent event, held at Durham Cricket Club, to learn of North East opportunities relating to the UK’s billion pound rail sector.

Business Durham, together with the Rail Alliance and the County Durham Engineering and Manufacturing Network, organised the event which featured a lineup of high profile industry speakers.

Delegates heard from the likes of Robert Hopkin, executive director of the Rail Alliance and Michael Noakes of the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy who highlighted the £100bn of investment the UK Government has committed to invest in the sector by 2020.

He told the conference that with the North East’s record of engineering and innovation, many companies in the region were placed to provide the goods and services needed.

Representatives of Hitachi Rail Europe were also among the speakers who shared the company’s experience of developing a new supply chain in the North East since Hitachi opened its flagship multi million-pound plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in 2015.

Craig Hartley, senior category manager at Hitachi Rail said: “It was fantastic to see so many businesses from the region coming together to talk about the growing rail industry in the North East.

“We’re proud to be building the next generation of rolling stock in the region and continuing to increase our local supplier network.”

Graeme Parkins of Dyer Engineering, based in Stanley, County Durham, gave an overview about how the company has targeted segments of the rail sector, developed a suite of products which matched their engineering capabilities and invested heavily in the sector.

Businesses also heard about planned investments in the sector including track and station improvement and new carriages, nationally significant projects such as HS2 and CrossRail and investments closer to home such as Nexus in the Tyneside Metro system.

According to the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train companies and Network Rail, the UK’s rail industry and its supply chain contribute up to 10.4bn in GVA per year and employs more than 240,000 people.

Simon Goon, managing director of Business Durham, added: “There are a myriad of opportunities in the rail sector for companies in the North East so it’s been of huge value to them to hear what hiring businesses are looking for and from those which are part of the ever increasing supply chain.”