(Bloomberg) -- Hitachi Ltd. of Japan and French partner Alstom SA won a 2 billion-pound ($2.6 billion) contract to supply a fleet of 225-mile-per-hour electric trains for Britain’s new HS2 high-speed railway.
The consortium, formed by Hitachi and the former Bombardier Transportation business taken over by Alstom in January, will build and maintain 54 trains for the first section of track from London Euston station to Birmingham in central England, according to a statement Thursday from HS2 Ltd.
The decision will support or create thousands of jobs and boost Britain’s two main train factories, the historic Litchurch Lane works in Derby, central England, now run by Alstom, and Hitachi’s newer Newton Aycliffe plant in the northeast. Manufacture of the 200-meter long, eight-car trains begins in 2025.
HS2 suffered a blow last month when Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government scrapped most of a planned eastward extension to Leeds in Yorkshire as the cost of Europe’s biggest infrastructure project climbed above 100 billion pounds. A the same time, it confirmed that the western arm would continue north to Manchester.
“We are excited to be pioneering the next generation of high speed rail in the U.K. as part of our joint venture with Alstom,” Hitachi Rail Chief Executive Officer Andrew Barr said in the release. “This British-built bullet train will be the fastest in Europe.”
The contract will tap Hitachi’s advanced-welding facility in Newton Aycliffe, a new production line at the Alstom factory in Derby and the French firm’s wheel-unit manufacturing facility in Crewe, sustaining more than 500 jobs directly and about 2,000 in the wider supply chain.
Maintenance will be provided at an Alstom facility in Birmingham under a 12-year deal.
The contract was due to be awarded in late 2019 but suffered a series of delays. The original bidders included Germany’s Siemens AG, which has taken legal steps over the tender process, Spain’s Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles SA, and Alstom’s main French arm with a variant of its TGV.
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