Alstom signs deal for vital Aventra order after DfT confirms funding

There was a sigh of relief in some circles late on Friday 14 June as Alstom and the Department for Transport (DfT) announced a £370 million pound deal for the construction and maintenance of 10 new nine-car  Class 345 Aventra trains for the Elizabeth Line.

The trains will be built at Alstom’s Litchurch Lane factory in Derby, which the company had begun redundancy consultations with, after conceding last year that the gaps in orders at the factory were too big to overcome unless new orders were made.

The factory itself has remained dormant since March with 1,600 jobs at risk.

Alstom had originally said that 10 new trains was the minimum required to ensure that Litchurch Lane could continue to produce them.

The deal itself will see the DfT provide £220.5 million in funding for the new trains whilst Transport for London has agreed to ensure maintenance of the trains until 2046.

Months of negotiations between DfT and the company have taken place, however it was understood that they had ended in May with no resolution – a view further cemented once the general election had been called.

Whilst the news has been broadly welcomed, the union UNITE, remained highly critical of the government’s approach to negotiations, claiming that the deal could have signed a year ago, with its general secretary, Sharon Graham commenting “Our members at Alstom will be breathing a huge sigh of relief but they should never have been in this position in the first place.

"The government were guilty of being asleep at the wheel. There is a huge need for new trains in this country, but Alstom was being starved of work.”

Alstom had initially raised the issue of a gap in production in May 2023, highlighting that its Aventra EMU orders were ending and its contract to build HS2 trains was not due to begin until mid-2026.

It has since been attempting to secure new orders, with demand on the Elizabeth Line currently close to outstripping its 70-strong Aventra fleet, a new order to cover the demand was seen as the obvious choice.

Attention will now inevitably turn to the future with the Railway Industry Association (RIA) urging any new government to ensure that the invitations to tender for new trains are brought forward.

There are currently rolling-stock tender invitations for Southeastern, TransPennine Express, Chiltern, Northern and potentially Great Western Railway which is currently conducting market engagement on replacing its Class 150 and Class 165 fleets.

The announcement also brings into sharper focus the future of the UK’s assembly plants and specifically Hitachi Rail’s plant in Newton Aycliffe, which had warned in March that work on its West Coast and East Midlands Railways orders would slow down, and redundancy talks would need to take place.