A sorry saga featured God, Mammon and motors
THE sorry tale of the collapse of Wrightbus reached a happy conclusion yesterday as Jo Bamford confirmed he’d reached a deal in principle to buy the factory and site from Jeff Wright, the former chief shareholder of the business.
Agreement in principle has also been reached to buy the business and assets of Wrightbus from the administrators Deloitte.
It is a cause for celebration but it has been a painful, fraught and highly emotional process played out from the factory gates to the stage of the evangelical Green Pastures Church in Ballymena, where Jeff Wright (56) is pastor.
Green
Pastures has received £15m (€17m) over the last six years from Wrightbus’ parent company Cornerstone Group. That brought questions of financial prudence as profits of the company went to the church and its key project, a new building development called the Gateway Project.
How Jo Bamford, from a devoutly Catholic family, negotiates that former relationship will be interesting. His father Lord Bamford, the chairman of equipment group JCB, funded the 2010 visit of Pope Benedict to the UK. Like the bus company’s founder Sir William Wright he is a staunch Brexiteer. Relationships within the Wright family have come under immense pressure. Jeff Wright, while no longer a director, held all the cards when it came to agreeing a deal because his separate company, Whirlwind Property No 2, is the landlord of the main Wrightbus site. And as the administrators began the frantic process of dealing with the sale, it was realised that the workers who are paid fortnightly hadn’t yet been paid. Lorraine Rock (61), Sir William’s daughter and a company director, settled the wage bill of £570,000 herself.
Another sister, Mandy (64), had been quiet throughout, but her son and daughter Fiona and Chris have used social media to vent their anger at what’s happened, with Chris saying: “The right thing needs to be done. Get the whole site sold and give the people their future back.”
In reality, the arrival of Jo Bamford and his company Ryse Hydrogen is only the end of the beginning of what could yet be a long process.
He will be tasked with getting the company back on its feet, including restoring a battered reputation among suppliers and customers. Suppliers in Northern Ireland alone are believed to be owed £25m. It’s unlikely that they’ll get more of a fraction of that.
Mr Bamford will have to win back those suppliers and restore the confidence of customers.
Administrator Michael Magney said customers would ultimately pick up what he called the “Rolls Royce of buses” but there was a question over how could they be confident that orders would be completed given the problems in the company.
Wrightbus had been haemorrhaging money, partly due to a downturn in core markets like the UK and China and a fundamental shift in the industry towards ‘green’ models of buses rather than the traditional diesel. A move by the company to relocate work from Malaysia back to Ballymena, also ended up eroding profits.
Up to recently Wrightbus had been the embodiment of everything that’s successful about Northern Ireland.
The hope now is that with a sale agreed the worst is behind it, and it’s back on the road.
As administrators began the sale it was realised the workers had not yet been paid