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From brink
Page 7
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Ron Hancock, former chairman of Leyland Trucks, is AWD's managing director. He will be charged with ensuring that the Dunstable truck and bus plant gets into profit in its first year. Hancock will lead a team of ex-Bedford managers, but there will also be important new appointments including a sales director, marketing director, and finance director.
Hancock says he "missed the truck industry like bloody hell". He is making a full review of the Dunstable plant to prepare it for the planned product developments and new products. All 1,100 jobs at the plant are assured and Hancock plans to take on 70 design and marketing staff from GM at Luton.
Hancock expects that his experience at Leyland will help boost exports as he is familiar with a number of export markets in which Bedford does not currently compete.
Brown's private purchase of the Dunstable plant follows a series of mergers and takeovers in which British truck builders have formed liaisons with overseas companies: "A British company is now buying into the truck industry at a time when many of our competitors are having to link up with firms from European and other countries," he says.
The new company is the largest British-owned onhighway truck manufacturer, and his dump truck company, Artix is the country's largest British off-highway truck maker. With a combined turnover of around £165 million Artix and AWD becomes the largest privately-owned commercial vehicle operation in Europe.
The Transport and General Workers Union convenor at Dunstable, Alan Partridge, says: "We welcome the purchase of the plant. We are work ing under the same terms and conditions and we are looking forward to the challenge of turning the plant round."
Partridge says General Motors would have closed the plant by the end of next year if it had failed to find a buyer, and blames General Motors' "corporate policies" for Dunstable's recent demise.
The union is currently involved in wage negotiations for an award last September and Partridge is hopeful an agreement can soon be made with AWD management.
AWD's competitors have been muted in their response to the takeover. Iveco Ford says: "We have no particular comment to make. We have known it was building up to an announcement over the last couple of weeks. At the sort of volumes they seem to be talking about. . . it doesn't look as if they are going to have that important an effect on mainline manufacturers."
ERF's marketing director Brian Hunt says: "I think it is a good move personally. It would have been a shame to see Bedford go and I think David Brown is the right man to get to grips with it." Hunt believes AWD will have a hard time re-establishing the Bedford products in the home market, but expects the new company to fare well in the military and export markets.