North West in the running to land thousands of train manufacturing jobs

Thousands of jobs could be created in St Helens if the town is chosen as the location for a new train manufacturing factory.

Spanish firm Talgo has chosen the Merseyside town as a possible site for manufacturing trains for the UK’s high-speed network.

Mostyn in North Wales, Chesterfield and Leeds are all in the running along with two towns in Scotland.

Last October Talgo – who manufacture intercity, standard, and high-speed passenger trains – unveiled plans to build a new high speed fleet for the new UK high speed network.

The trains operate in 28 countries including Germany, the USA and Saudi Arabia.

St Helens Council, with the backing of the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership and also working with the Combined Authority, have been working with Talgo for over a year on the project.

The scheme has the potential to create thousands of jobs both at the manufacturing facility itself, but also within the Talgo supply chain.

The announcement was made at an event in Birmingham organised by Talgo.

Talgo said that even unsuccessful bids are likely to result in supply chain opportunities for those areas.

The company is on the shortlist for HS2 but also plans to make trains for exporting to foreign markets.

Carlos de Palacio, president of Talgo, said: “Although there can only be one factory site, we have developed excellent relationships with areas that we have visited.

“We anticipate continuing these relationships to ensure that Talgo provides opportunity across the UK.”

The investment could see train manufacturing ‘coming home’ to the borough that gave the world the first commercially operated train following the Rainhill Trials.

Official data found that 4,000 jobs were created in St Helens between 2016 and 2017, and recent announcements of major investments at the M6 Major site as well as the relocation of Movianto into St Helens.

Eamonn McManus, chair of St Helens Economy Board said: “St Helens has seen significant success in growing our economy over the last few years with almost half of all new jobs in the Liverpool City Region having been created in St Helens between 2016 and 2017 according to national statistics released last week.

“In addition, over 1.2million square feet of development in underway this year with potentially the three biggest industrial projects in the North West all happening within the Borough. It’d be a great time for Talgo to come to St Helens too.”

St Helens Council Leader Derek Long added: “We’re competing hard across the UK to bring these high quality jobs to the borough and are committed to ensuring that not only does St Helens attract a greater volume of jobs but the highest quality of jobs too.

“This is why we have been actively working with partners to try and bring Talgo to St Helens as we see high-quality train manufacturing jobs as exactly the type we would like to see come to the borough.

“The borough has a great manufacturing tradition and an exceptionally skilled workforce. We are also mid-way between Manchester and Liverpool which means we can tap into a fantastically diverse labour market while Newton-le-Willows itself has been a centre for train production in the near past.

“We believe that Newton-le-Willows, and St Helens more widely, would provide the ideal location for Talgo to locate their UK operation.”

Conor McGinn, MP for St Helens North said: “My constituency and the wider borough of St Helens has a fantastic heritage when it comes to railways and would provide an ideal location for Talgo to base a new UK factory.”

Asif Hamid, chair of the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “Building a world class rail manufacturing cluster in the City Region is one of our strategic economic priorities.

“We have outstanding facilities, talent and infrastructure and have been working closely with St Helens to help Talgo to take advantage of these in Newton le Willows and bring rail manufacture back to where it all began.”