Wrightbus

Wrightbus is a Northern Irish bus manufacturer and a pioneer of the low-floor bus. The company was established in 1946 by Robert Wright and was later run by his son William Wright, until it was acquired in 2019 by British businessman Jo Bamford.

1940s to 1970s - Early years
Wrightbus was founded in 1946 as Robert Wright & Son Coachbuilders. In its early years it rebodied lorries. In 1978, the company released its first aluminium-structured bus bodywork.

1990s - Breakthrough into bus bodybuilding sector
Wright's breakthrough into the mainstream bus bodybuilding sector came in the early 1990s. The Handybus was a midibus body offered on a variety of chassis but was more successful than the emerging Dennis Dart in attracting reasonably-sized orders from a variety of operators including London Buses, Go Ahead Northern, Ulsterbus and Citybus (Belfast). This was followed by a move into the full-size single deck market with the Endeavour which was fitted to Dennis Javelin, Leyland Tiger and Scania K93 chassis, and enabled Wright to develop its highly successful Endurance body which competed with the Alexander Strider and Northern Counties Paladin for orders on Volvo B10B and Scania N113CRB chassis.

Other Wright products introduced in this period included two Mercedes-Benz-based products, the O405 based Cityranger and the OH1416 based Urbanranger. The latter was launched around the time bus operators in the UK began switching to low floor chassis and consequently only attracted a handful of orders. However, Wright had become well established in the bus bodybuilding sector by then, and was able to exploit the opportunities the low-floor revolution would offer it from the mid-1990s onwards.

Low-floor
In 1993, the Pathfinder on low floor Dennis Lance SLF and Scania N113CRL chassis was unveiled.

The Axcess-Ultralow was introduced in 1995 and offered on the Scania L113 chassis. At this time it was selling in reasonable numbers to UK bus operators, but unlike other bodybuilders who could only offer the L113 with step-entrance bodies, Wright modified it by removing the middle section of the chassis and thus offered UK bus operators one of the first mainstream low-floor body/chassis combinations. A major customer for the Axcess-Ultralow was FirstGroup, taking approximately 240.

Next up was the Volvo B10L based Liberator introduced at the end of 1995: National Express ordered 120 in 1997. This would be followed by the Renown body built on the Volvo B10BLE chassis, which went on to become the standard bus of the Blazefield Group.

2000s
Robert Wright & Son was restructured in 2000, with the bus building operation rebranded to Wrightbus as a part of the Wright Group. Companies formed alongside Wrightbus in the Wright Group were Expotech, handling the export of the group's technologies and international joint ventures such as Chance Coaches, and CustomCare, an aftermarket support operation servicing buses delivered by both Wrightbus and other bus manufacturers.

After production of the Volvo B10BLE ceased in 2001, Wrightbus developed the Wright Eclipse body for the new Volvo B7L chassis, which due to its vertical rear engine wasn't popular with many operators. Nevertheless, Wright did not lose custom and many operators such as Ulsterbus switched to the incline-engined Scania L94UB, on a similar Wright Solar body. Another bodywork which resembles the current Solar/Eclipse range is the Meridian, which was bodied on the MAN A22 full low-floor single-deck chassis.

Wrightbus' first double-decker bus, the Wright Eclipse Gemini, was launched on the Volvo B7TL chassis in 2001. A similarly styled bus entered service with Arriva London in August 2003 as the Wright Pulsar Gemini on the VDL DB250 chassis. Large operators of Gemini-bodied Wrightbus buses included Arriva, the FirstGroup, the Go-Ahead Group, Lothian Buses and National Express' West Midlands, Coventry and Dundee operations.

2010s
One of the company's most notable products is the New Routemaster London bus, introduced in February 2012 as an update of the AEC Routemaster. Production ended in 2017 when the 1,000th New Routemaster left the production line.

Since May 2013, Wrightbus began building its own chassis, the StreetLite single-decker and StreetDeck double decker. However, they still continue to produce bodywork for the Volvo B5TL, Volvo B5LH and Volvo B8RLE.

In 2016, the Wright SRM was introduced on the Volvo B5LH. It was an adaptation of the New Routemaster body onto Volvo's hybrid chassis at a shorter length of 10.6 m, with only six sold to RATP Dev subsidiary London United that same year.

2019-present - Administration and acquisition by Jo Bamford
Between September and October 2019, Wrightbus entered administration with the suspension of 1,300 jobs at its factory. At the time Deloitte was appointed as the company's administrators, Wrightbus was £60 million in debt, with £38.1 million of that debt owed to the Bank of Ireland.

During the six years prior to Wrightbus going into administration, it was reported that Jeff Wright, the owner of the company, had donated £15 million to a church he had founded in 2007, Green Pastures Church. This led to protests on 29 September 2019 which were joined by many of the company's former workers, including members of the Wright family.

On 11 October 2019, a deal was reached in principle between Jo Bamford (son of Anthony Bamford, chairman of the construction equipment manufacturer JCB) and the Wright family for the land used by the factory, a sticking point in negotiations to sell the firm. A deal was made with the administrators eleven days later, with Jo Bamford's Bamford Bus Company concluding a takeover of the company.

Since the takeover of Wrightbus, Bamford has been committed to creating a market for hydrogen buses with a reconfigured StreetDeck that is powered by hydrogen. In 2020, Bamford said he planned to build 3,000 buses of this type by 2024.

Zero emission
Wrightbus has followed two strategies towards achieving zero emission: creating battery-powered and fuel cell (powered by hydrogen) vehicles. Early orders following the introduction of Wright's Electroliner and Hydroliner range included the Go-Ahead Group, who placed orders for fuel cell buses for its Metrobus fleet on the Fastway bus rapid transit service, and Translink of Northern Ireland, who placed an initial order for 38 battery electric buses.

Wrightbus announced in February 2023 that it was planning to build a green hydrogen production facility on its Ballymena site in partnership with Hygen Energy, capable of producing enough hydrogen to fuel up to 300 buses per day with the option to triple its production in line with future demand for the fuel. Funding for the construction of electrolysers at the facility was secured from the first round of the UK government's £37.9 million UK Net Zero Hydrogen Fund in March 2023. Wrightbus was later granted up to £534,000 million in funding from the UK government-sponsored Advanced Propulsion Centre fund in September 2023 to develop a driveline for a hydrogen fuel cell-powered coach, which will be intended as a functional "technology demonstrator".

In June 2024, Wrightbus announced it had formed NewPower, a new subsidiary headquartered at the former Arrival Bus factory in Bicester, Oxfordshire, aimed at facilitating battery electric repowering of existing diesel Wrightbus buses, such as the StreetDeck, Gemini 2 and New Routemaster. At a cost of over £200,000, the repowering process involves the removal of the diesel drivetrain and ensuing fitment of a Voith Electric Drive System coupled with NMC battery packs and a Grayson HVAC system, all capable of being performed over a period of three weeks at a factory capacity of six buses being converted at one time. Wrightbus also announced it had opened a bus refurbishment business a short distance from the NewPower facility, which is aimed to complete external and internal refurbishments of buses following their battery electric conversions.

Exports
In 1997, an order for 25 Wright Crusader-bodied Dennis Darts was delivered to Australian operator ACTION. Between 2003 and 2006, Hong Kong operator Kowloon Motor Bus received a total of 164 Wrightbus three-axle double-deckers; 100 of them were on Volvo Super Olympian and 64 of them were on Volvo B9TL chassis. In 2009, Kowloon Motor Bus had ordered a total of 291 buses, including one demonstrator with two-axle, and all buses were in service in 2012. In 2010, the first of 450 Wright Eclipse Gemini 2-bodied Volvo B9TLs was delivered to SBS Transit, Singapore till end 2012.

In 2011, Wrightbus International was established. A contract was awarded by SBS Transit for 565 Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 bodied Volvo B9TLs and delivered since January 2013 till June 2015. In November 2012, a contract for 50 Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 bodied Volvos was awarded by Kowloon Motor Bus. These were sent in knock-down kit (CKD) form from Northern Ireland and assembled in China and followed by another 85, including two 12.8-metre-long demonstrators. In September 2013, Wrightbus entered into a partnership with Daimler Buses to manufacture buses in Chennai, India.

In March 2014, orders were secured from Hong Kong operators Citybus and New World First Bus for 51 bodies on Volvo B9TL chassis. These were sent in CKD form from Northern Ireland and assembled in Malaysia. In July 2014, SBS Transit ordered a further 415 Eclipse Gemini 2-bodied Volvo B9TLs which will be delivered from August 2015 till 2017, increasing the total to 1,430 by 2017. A single Eclipse Gemini 3-bodied Volvo B8L prototype was exported to Singapore for trial with SBS Transit but was subsequently sold to A&S Transit, a private bus operator in Singapore.