Official inauguration of Hitachi Rail Vehicle Manufacturing Facility

Hitachi’s new Rail Vehicle Manufacturing Facility in Newton Aycliffe was officially opened. The facility has been developed by Merchant Place Developments Limited.
“We were pleased to win the contract to bring Hitachi to our site, after a competition against some 42 alternative sites. We are now even more delighted to see our work largely done with handover of the completed building to Hitachi Rail in mid July 2015 and the official opening today,” Geoff Hunton of Merchant Place Developments Limited said.
“This project has been a funding challenge …; it has been a challenge obtaining planning permission (with the need to move protected newts from the immediate site); and it has been a challenge to complete the factory (including the connection of the site to the local branch line network and to provide a test track for the new trains). However we are now there and we are happy and proud to have met these challenges and to see Hitachi’s celebrations on their opening ceremony. It will all feel worthwhile when we start seeing trains roll out of the factory in 2016. We congratulate Hitachi at this very significant time,” Michael Chicken, chief executive of Merchant Place Developments Limited and Merchant Place Corporate Finance Limited said.