4 | Aycliffe Today Business
BUSINESS BRIEFS
UTC MARKS FIRST YEAR
Gestamp Tallent and Hitachi Rail Europe celebrated UTC South Durham’ s first academic year after its first 12 months in operation.
Company bosses joined UTC staff for the official opening of the Hitachi Rail engineering hall and the Gestamp robot cell during the celebration event.
Already 140 students have studied at the college in the first year, with an additional 200 due to start in September.
FIRM MOVES TO AYCLIFFE
A technology company has been hailed as one of the region’ s undiscovered gems after moving to the Aycliffe Business Park.
Excelpoint decided to move after outgrowing offices in nearby Shildon, and is now based in Evans Business Centre.
The company’ s software enables organisations to create bespoke business systems without writing a line of bespoke code.
NETPARK’ S £ 12.6M EXPANSION
Work has begun on infrastructure works which will form a key part of major expansion plans at a County Durham science park.
The construction of a 1km road at the North East Technology Park( NETPark) in Sedgefield will access a further 26 acres of development land.
The new road and infrastructure works forms Phase 3 of ambitious expansion plans at NETPark to create additional space for research and development companies and create 1,400 new jobs.
GROWTH HALTED
Productivity fell in the first few months of the year, bringing an end to a recent run of growth, according to new figures.
The Office for National Statistics( ONS) said labour productivity as measured by output per hour fell by 0.5 % from the final quarter of 2016, to the first three months of this year.
It’ s the first fall since the end of 2015.
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The Queen hitches ride on Hitachi train
On 13 June 1842, Queen Victoria made the journey from Slough to Paddington and became the first British monarch to travel by train. The train that day was driven by Daniel Gooch and assisted by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
To mark this unique occasion GWR recreated the journey between the two stations using its new Hitachi-built Intercity Express Train, in the presence of HM The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Royal party were joined on the train by Isambard Thomas and Gillian White, the direct descendants of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Sir Daniel Gooch.
Following the naming ceremony, The Queen was presented with a pair of specially designed coins Tim O’ Toole, Chief Executive of GWR’ s owner’ s FirstGroup presented The Queen with a pair of specially designed coins which will become a feature of GWR’ s new trains.
Great Western Railway’ s Intercity Express Train marks the start of the biggest fleet upgrade in a generation on GWR’ s network and is the first major intercity fleet to be introduced on the UK rail network from some
20 years. It is due to enter passenger service first on the Great Western Railway in the autumn this year, and will enable longer trains with more seats, faster and more frequent train services.
The trains are being built by the 900-strong workforce at Hitachi its North East factory in Newton Aycliffe, as part of the Government’ s £ 5.7bn Intercity Express Programme.
Her Majesty was greeted at Slough Station by school children from four local schools who had produced their own drawings to mark the occasion.
Businesses tap into burgeoning rail sector
More than 100 businesses from across the North East heard how they could tap into the billion pound rail sector at a sell-out conference.
Business Durham, together with the Rail Alliance and the County Durham Engineering and Manufacturing Network, held the event at Durham Cricket Club, in Chester Le Street, to help companies take advantage of the burgeoning rail sector.
Delegates heard from a range of speakers, including Robert Hopkin, executive director of the Rail Alliance and Michael Noakes of the Department for Business Energy and
Great Western Railway’ s Intercity Express Train marks the start of the biggest fleet upgrade in a generation
Industrial Strategy who highlighted the £ 100 billion 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 multimillion-pound plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in 2015.