Falkirk bus builder Alexander Dennis to announce biggest ever overseas contract

ALEXANDER Dennis is set to announce its biggest-ever overseas order in a new contract win that will send the coach builder’s turnover surging through the £500 million barrier.

The £110m order will be officially unveiled on Tuesday at the Euro Bus Expo 2012 in Birmingham.

Alexander Dennis chief executive Colin Robertson said he was not at liberty to reveal the name of buyer, whose custom will be a major boon for the Scottish company.

“But it is the biggest single international order we have ever received,” he added.

Half the work will be carried out at the company’s Falkirk headquarters, where Alexander Dennis employs about 900 of its more than 2,200 global staff. The remainder will be undertaken abroad in facilities closer to the customer’s home market.

The new order follows the takeover in June of Sydney-based Custom Coaches, its first outright acquisition since it was rescued from administration eight years ago.

The company is thought to have paid about £20m for Custom Coaches, which has a 24 per cent share of the Australian bus market. Building upon existing joint ventures in New Zealand, Hong Kong and North America, the deal to acquire Custom was billed as the next “significant step” in the bus builder’s globalisation programme.

The addition of Custom’s £55m in annual sales will push turnover at Alexander Dennis to just shy of the £500m target that it didn’t originally expect to achieve until 2015. Robertson said the company had now upped its goals, and was aiming to be a £1bn turnover operation by 2020.

Alexander Dennis was rescued in 2004 by a Scottish consortium after its parent company, Mayflower Corporation, went into administration. At that time, the Scottish company’s turnover of roughly £150m was dominated by sales to a limited number of large UK customers.