Nail in the coffin? Except that regardless of who owns the plant, British workers will still be employed. At the moment, Derby has back orders for at least a few more years, although with the Covid effect on capacity, follow on orders aren't guaranteed. If they offer the right product of bi-modes or a diesel Aventra they may be still open in a decades time.
This merger is partly to defend against Asian manufacturing, to keep competitive and maintain dominance in the European rolling stock market, it's the free market working to be more efficient.
You have a lot more faith in Alstom than I do! After the GEC merger in 1989, they began to move production away from the UK to France. It makes business sense for them, no doubt, to concentrate their production lines ‘at home’ rather than bank rolling plants abroad. However, surely you accept that many manufacturing jobs in the UK were lost because of this? No UK government in decades ever stepped in to to save jobs such as these.
It’s interesting you champion the efficiency of the free market, whilst I see this as an obsession that leads to job cuts and plant closures. Again, see my initial comments; how many comparable economies to the UK own so little of their own infrastructure?
This country is little more than a ‘supermarket’ for multinationals like Alstom and others to cherry pick assets and dispose of others. It’s happened so many times before in the last three decades; your confidence in Litchurch Lane remaining open is sadly too optimistic. I would expect closure to be on the cards in the mid 2020s or so, after the current order book runs out.
Why would a French company subsidise one plant in the UK when it has extensive manufacturing sites in France? If the Aventra stock and its successor platforms are successful, and maybe exportable, they won’t remain in Derby by the 2030s.
This is all just my opinion anyway, always happy to have a good debate about these kind of things and listen to other people’s views such as yours. I’m heading into university research on UK industrial policy, so the Alstom takeover of Bombardier is going to be a large case study for me to look into properly. However, I’m also dreading it too...