Daily Record suggests Canadian bus company already given £62 million to stay but which always planned to leave should have had more cash from you

Alexander Dennis (ADL), owned by a Canadian multinational, NFI Group Inc., had already signalled major restructuring and at least partial withdrawal from full bus-building in Scotland.

They had £58 million from you since 2020 and in September 2025, a further £4.1 million. In March 2026 won a Scottish Government contract for 123 buses but Chinese manufacturer Yutong won a contract for 166. On March 31, 2026, the owners announced full closure.

Would it have been reasonable on the light of other pressures on public spending and taxation for the Scottish Government to have given more public money to a company based outside of Scotland likely to have pulled out anyway?

For many years I travelled on Alexander Dennis buses and knew folk who worked there but we’d have just been paying the Canadians for ever and where dopes that come from?

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3 thoughts on “Daily Record suggests Canadian bus company already given £62 million to stay but which always planned to leave should have had more cash from you”

  1. So we can’t even make buses anymore. It tends to support Scotonomic’s argument against relying on Foreign Direct Investment. The profits and decision making lie abroad.

    Scotonomics posts a lot on these issues and recently held their economics festival. Worth reading and viewing.

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  2. It’s wrong of the Daily Record to say “the (Canadian) owners announced full closure.”

    Alexander Dennis is consulting with its unions to convert its Larbert manufacturing facility to a chassis assembly site, supporting all of its low-emission and zero-emission bus products. They will close a legacy Falkirk facility, aligning with its long-standing plans to exit that site.

    The proposal would safeguard approximately 200 skilled manufacturing and support jobs previously at risk of redundancy and would retain approximately 350 roles within Scotland.

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  3. Would they have been cheaper than other companies manufacturing buses? How much does a bus cost to produce? Could be a bargain for energy efficient journeys. Not wasting fuel and energy, by comparison.

    Five years. £10million a year. For how many buses? Electric. Increasing bus fleets. Bus pa

    Keeping jobs and economic expansion in Scotland. Using less fuel. Less people sick with asthma and other conditions. Saving on the SNHS.

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