The North Norfolk operator has a number of events planned later this year to mark its half-century, and has taken delivery of two new coaches reflecting its past and present identities
2025 marks 50 years since Sanders Coaches began trading from the small country town of Holt in North Norfolk, just a couple of miles from the spectacular North Norfolk Coast. Formed in 1975 by Norman and Gladys Sanders as a small five-vehicle local coach operation, the current business is split across three depots and covers both an extensive local bus network and private coach hire. Having won the coveted title of Top Independent Operator at the UK Bus Awards in both 2023 and 2024, the company is now owned by the sons of the founders, Charles and Paul Sanders, and employs over 120 people.
Plans have been made to celebrate this significant anniversary in a number of ways during the second half of this year, leading up to the actual anniversary date towards the end. Commencing this period of celebration has been the debut, just in time for the busy June/July coach season, of two brand new Yutong GT12 coaches, one wearing the current eye catching coaching colour scheme, and the other in the white, blue and orange livery adopted not long after the start of the business and still in use into the 2000s.
Sanders Coaches worked with David Jordan of bus industry marketing and publicity specialist Jump-On on the development and adaptation of an accurate version of the heritage livery onto a modern-day vehicle. At the time that the original livery was in use, coaches were usually hand painted and signwritten by different individuals, to slightly different livery layouts and employing different lettering styles and wording, and what has been recreated is both an authentic and sympathetic combination of those elements.
The vehicles themselves are named after two well-known local individuals: Michael Wynn Jones and TV chef Delia Smith to honour their contributions over many years to Norwich City Football Club, whilst also recognising Sanders’ long standing association with the club which includes providing both home and away travel for fans of the ‘Canaries.’ Both coaches were captured on camera during a glorious June morning within the grounds of The Muckleburgh Military Collection at Weybourne, Norfolk by local transport photographer Stephen Purkiss prior to taking up duties as part of the company’s now 90-strong modern fleet.
