ADL state of the nation

Manufacturer launches the BYD ADL Enviro400EV at its Scarborough production facility as its senior leadership team recaps 2018 – the most successful year in the company’s history. James Day reports

Alexander Dennis Limited (ADL) has held a ‘state of the nation’ talk at its Scarborough factory, where it provided a detailed recap of the last 12 months across all parts of its business and formally launched the new BYD ADL Enviro400 City EV.

Much of the ADL management team was present at the event, providing a number of detailed presentations. A factory tour was provided by ADL Scarborough General Manager, Alan Atkinson.

At the time of the visit, the news of the ADL sale to NFI Group had not yet been announced.

A record year
Stefan Baguette, Group Product Manager, provided a group business update to start proceedings.

He said that ADL had a record year in 2018 with sales of £631m, up from £577m in 2017. Much of this increase was thanks to a £61m growth in international sales, which more than offset a £7m decline in the UK.
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Profit increased to £28.2m from £24.4m, with the company’s profit margin also rising from 4.2% to 4.5%.

Stefan highlighted that the company has done ‘more than ever before to invest in people.’ “With all the activity in product development and new markets, we had 50 engineering positions to fill this time last year,” he said. “That was not something that would have happened by itself with our existing approach to recruiting, so we decided to take a more proactive approach.

“We ran five careers roadshows to meet prospective talent. We’ve increased our digital presence and engaged with universities and careers fairs. We always have someone along who actually does the job and can speak about what it is like.

“We filled 43 of the 50 positions in the first phase and halved our attrition rate. We’ve also had a massive growth in direct applicants to us, which means we rely less on recruitment consultancies to fill positions. We’ve also had huge graduate interest.”

After delivery

Mark Wallis, UK Aftermarket Director, said his division had seen revenue growth of more than 10% per year.

“Customers are realising as vehicles get more and more complex, we know them better than anyone else,” Mark said. “We are able to assist both in and out of warranty.

“Operators are outsourcing more work to our workshops, which is giving us additional revenue streams. There are also retrofit opportunities.

“We’ve invested in our Anston and Harlow facilities and no longer need to rely on subcontractors. We can see the work through from cradle to grave.”

One of the projects highlighted by Mark was a repower of 70 Euro IV MAN ADL Enviro300s with new Cummins Euro VI engines – a £3m contract for Stagecoach. “We’ve completed work on around 48, which have been back in service for several months now and are performing well,” Mark added.

Recently, the DVSA announced that there were safety concerns with Enviro200 (non-MMC models from 2004-2018) and Enviro300 (2002-2015) buses with ADL chassis, related to front spring and rear anchor bolts on the suspension. Just over 6,000 vehicles are potentially affected, most of which are Enviro200s.

“It’s not a widespread issue, but some customers are experiencing issues,” Mark explained. “Our engineering team is making design improvements which are in test now. Parts have been ordered ahead of testing to ensure we can support customers immediately once testing proves successful. All parts will be issued free of charge in a service kit.”

Driving technology
Mark Chapman, Head of Electric Software and Engineering, detailed some of the onboard systems which ADL is working on.

He highlighted how the Advanced Emergency Braking (AEB) ADL has been working on since 2016 has played a key role in the development of the AEB section of Transport for London’s (TfL) Bus Safety Standard.

“Also part of the Bus Safety Standard is Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA),” Mark added. “This uses GPS location of the vehicle with an overlaid digital speed map to assist the driver in complying with the speed limit.

“There are other aftermarket options available for retrofit, but our system is integrated, utilising some of the technologies and interfaces available through our systems suppliers.” An alternative retrofit system is a future consideration.

Mark also touched on the mirror replacement system SmartVision: “This allows us to improve the visibility the driver has, and the clarity of image in low light provides a comparable image to what you would get in daylight. The system will be retrofittable in future.”

As well as safety systems, Mark spoke about ADL’s work with autonomy. The company has an ongoing proof of concept trial taking place at Stagecoach Manchester’s Sharston depot, which began in March. ADL is also involved in another autonomous project on the Park & Ride route from Ferrytoll to Hermiston Gate in Edinburgh across the Forth Road Bridge using five autonomous Enviro200s, running at speeds of up to 50mph. The project is expected to start in mid-2020.

Better together

Phil Kershaw, Project Manager for the BYD ADL Enviro400EV, provided an update on the progress of the BYD ADL partnership as well as going into detail on the new double-decker – see separate panel.

Phil said the BYD ADL partnership now has a more than 70% share of the UK electric bus market. Currently, 160 Enviro200EVs are in service worldwide, with a further 45 on order, while 69 of the new Enviro400EVs are on the way.

Go-Ahead London is the biggest customer of BYD ADLs. It has placed orders for shorter Enviro200EVs – 22 10.2m (an example of which was on display at the event) for TfL route 214, and 11 9.6m variants for TfL route 100. These vehicles are all expected to use a new generation liquid-cooled 330kWh battery.

Considering success factors, Phil noted: “We’ve delivered on-time on all contracts so far. We’ve proven that full depot conversion is possible at Go-Ahead’s Waterloo Garage, with all infrastructure within the depot.

“Another advantage we have is smart charging, which allows the operator to balance the power that is required from the depot and reduces the peak power requirement.”

Success in all markets
Richard Matthews, Retail Sales Director, discussed the UK and Ireland bus market.

He noted that the volume of the UK bus market shrank by 20% in 2018 compared with the previous year – now down 32% on 2015. Despite this, ADL’s sales volumes have remained stable. Total bus sales in 2018 were 1,324, an increase of 19 on 2017, while coach sales decreased by six to 172.
Consequently, ADL’s market share was impressive. In 2018, it had a 77% share of the single-decker market and a 63% share of the double-decker market. In the coach market, its share was 16%, up from 14% the previous year.

“If you look at ADL’s business profile, it mirrors the UK bus market,” Richard said. “We’re not reliant on any one big market, we’re active in all.”
Sales to the ‘Big Five’ were down by 38 units, but ADL’s market share remained constant at 71%. In the next year, ADL will be supplying 89% of Stagecoach’s annual order, including 131 Enviro400s, 123 Enviro200s and 32 BYD ADL Enviro400EVs. The order also includes 12 single door versions of the Enviro400XLB for the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, the first vehicles of their kind to be sold to an operator other than Lothian Buses, and a fleet of 14 Plaxton Panorama coaches.

Richard also highlighted two other key successes with the Big Five, namely the 150 vehicles being delivered to First Glasgow between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, and orders for 11 Enviro200s and three Enviro400s at Go North East to go alongside the delivery of two Enviro200s and orders for 11 Enviro400s at East Yorkshire.

“Go North East is a division of Go-Ahead Group which does not usually purchase from ADL, so this is conquest business,” Richard noted.
In London, ADL expects a 62% share of the market in 2019. While this is down on the 72% share of 2018, Richard said the company is still very happy with it.

“RATP Dev London received 180 buses from ADL in 2018 – 85% of its new vehicles,” Richard said. “Fifty more have been ordered year-to-date in 2019.”

In the retail market, sales increased from 276 in 2017, to 285 in 2018. A strong increase in single-decker sales offset a decline in double-deckers. Richard highlighted the 13 Enviro200s at Warrington’s Own Buses – its first new vehicles in five years – along with 67 Scania ADL Enviro400CBG City buses to be delivered this year to Nottingham City Transport and 18 new buses for West Coast Motors.

A limited number of long wheelbase Enviro200s will be added to ADL’s stock bus fleet. Around 130 stock Enviro200s are sold per year through ADL, Mistral and Dawsongroup.

With the help of a dedicated salesman in Ireland, ADL has made headway, as Richard explained: “Dublin Bus is to trial a diesel electric hybrid, and our high-spec Enviro400 demonstrator which was displayed at Euro Bus Expo 2018 was sold on the stand to Ashbourne Connect. There is definitely a market for high-spec Enviro400s.”

Strong coach sales

Turning to the UK and Ireland coach market, Simon Wood, General Manager of Coach Sales, said Plaxton sold 144 single-deck coaches in 2018, achieving a 15% market share. “This is a result we were extremely proud of – our best result on coach since 2014,” Simon noted.

Eleven midi coaches were sold, for an 10% share, and 17 interdeck and double-deck coaches achieved a 50% share of their market. These latter figures are expected to increase further through sales of the Panther LE and Panorama.

Simon flagged up the sale of two Plaxton Elitei 13.8m VIP-spec coaches to Swans Travel, which he said has opened to door to the lucrative team coach market for ADL.

The Panther and Leopard continue to be volume sellers. Both available as stock vehicles, they account for around 50% and 25% of coach sales respectively. One 2018 order highlighted by Simon was from Horseman Coaches, recently named UK Coach Operator of the Year. It took delivery of 10 Panthers and two Leopards in 2018, and Simon confirmed a repeat order for 10 Panthers in 2019.

Simon also highlighted the leasing opportunities available from Plaxton in cooperation with Mistral, which has seen it make headway with operators who had not recently bought Plaxton coaches such as Grey’s of Ely and D&E Coaches. In total, 20 coaches were supplied in this way in 2018, while 17 Plaxton Leopards were supplied to Dawsongroup.

In Ireland, 28 coaches were sold in the last 12 months. Simon credited much of this success to the dedicated sales representative ADL has taken on in Ireland – Lee Gibson. ADL also attended the Irish Coach & Bus Show with a Plaxton Panther.

Simon also announced that a Plaxton Rally is to be held in Scarborough on 8 August. The event, for Plaxton customers, expects to attract up to 60 coaches. The event will be ticket entry.

“We already have 35 coaches confirmed from 17 customers,” Simon added. “We’re going to have vehicles from across the ages and different product types, and we will have various trophies for different categories of vehicles, with a dinner in the evening.

“None of the other manufacturers could do an event like this. They haven’t got the product range from across the eras.”

Plaxton update

Mark Ballam, Commercial Manager for Coach, provided a coach product update.

He highlighted the new 13.2m variant of the Plaxton Elite – a two-axle vehicle on a Volvo B8R chassis. This has increased seating capacity on the touring-spec vehicle from 49 to 53 and luggage capacity by two cubic metres. The initial order for 12 of these coaches was placed by Logans Executive Travel of Ballymena, who said the extra luggage capacity was a key factor in the decision.

Mark also touched on the Leopard interurban. A fleet of eight were delivered to Lothiancountry for its Green Arrow express services due to launch on 30 June. The vehicle has twin leaf centre doors and a fully automated wheelchair lift built into the centre steps.

The Leopard interurban order from Lothian follows coach orders for its Lothian Motorcoaches operator – five 14m Panthers in 2018 and six 12.8m Panthers in 2019.

Concerning the Panorama, Mark said: “It has surpassed our expectations for the first year. We will deliver 31 by the end of this year in a market that doesn’t always get to 31 vehicles sold. I think that’s phenomenal.

“The fully flat floor is quite unique for a double-deck coach. The fact you can get a wheelchair through the centre entrance doors is winning fans.
“We’ve also done some work to increase the luggage capacity by repackaging the water tanks in the main luggage hold.”

Mark said ADL is potentially interested in making a left-hand drive variant of the Panorama, but it would require an enabling order. A demonstrator vehicle has now been produced for the Panther LE, which is about to go on the road. ADL expects this to generate more interest in the vehicle. There may also be an opportunity to make a shorter version of the LE, perhaps on two axles.

Strong exports

Stefan Baguette, Group Product Manager, discussed ADL’s developments overseas. International turnover at the company was £281m in 2018, the highest it has ever been and up £61m on the previous year.

“We deliver to a more diversified mix of territories and customers,” Stefan stated. “We are now spread out from Canada to New Zealand, with manufacturing, sales and marketing throughout that territory.”

After 17 years of persuasion, TransLink Vancouver has invested in a fleet of 32 Enviro500s, with options for a further 50.

Also in North America, Foothill Transit in California has ordered two Enviro500EVs which are due to enter service in early 2020. The vehicle will operate in Los Angeles on commuter services, allowing time to charge between the peak hours. These vehicles are not part of the BYD ADL partnership – ADL is carrying out its own systems integration.

In Switzerland, a fleet of 13 Enviro500s are due for imminent delivery to TL, with the first of the vehicles through the Falkirk production line. An example will be exhibited at the UITP Global Public Transport Summit in Stockholm in June.

Stefan also highlighted ADL’s success in Germany, where at least 72 Enviro500s are expected to join the BVG fleet. The specification will feature a reversed front staircase. ADL expects a further 128 to be ordered for delivery from 2022, and the potential for a further 230 as an option in the framework contract. The contract is worth €220m.

In September 2018, a new 25,000sq ft facility was opened in Singapore to cover the South East Asia region. Also in Singapore, a fleet of 50 Enviro500s in a three-door, two-staircase layout have been procured by Singapore’s Land Transport Authority.

Five BYD ADL Enviro200EVs are due for delivery at Bayhopper Tauranga in New Zealand in late 2019. The bodies of the buses will be assembled in Zhuhai, China.

AD24 update
Richard Jackson, Aftermarket Technology Director, spoke about AD24, ADL’s new online parts service.

The site has been in development for around two years, and soft-launched in April 2018. It is designed as a ‘technical hub,’ not just an e-commerce platform, and is available for international customers as well as UK operators.

“We spent a lot of time on the user experience and interface to make the site as simple to use as possible,” said Richard.

“We took input from customers, suppliers and our own sales team. It’s surprising how complicated it is just to find a part number. The UK stock system has 350,000 part numbers on, of which 32,000 are active and 33% change every year. The system is being gradually rolled out throughout the world, and ensuring the site has multilingual capabilities has been a challenge, to say the least.”

Richard said pictures of parts were a must on the system, as it is very difficult to know for sure the part is right without an image.

Around a third of ADL parts turnover is not on ADL parts, but parts for Volvo, Scania and Mercedes-Benz equipment. “We sell all makes,” Richard explained. “The reason we do that is the big groups tend to buy by commodity and want an all-make solution. This gives us a challenge because we don’t have a parts manual for a Volvo, so we’ve built a website which can cope with these variations and allow users to find the information with or without a parts manual.”

The design of the website is something which required a lot of thought, as Richard discussed: “We brought in a company specialising in user experience and design to create the website. They asked us to find something we like, and two of these best we came across were Screwfix and John Lewis.

“The Screwfix website is very clever. It is clean and uses big images. It draws your eye to what you’re looking for, and gives you information in a subtle way that lets you make a decision quickly. John Lewis has a fantastic search engine, which lets you filter what you want to find something very specific.”

While AD24 is first and foremost an online parts service, there is a lot more to it. The company has created the Alexander Dennis Automated Manual, or ADAM. “Think of it as being like Amazon’s Alexa,” Richard enthused. “We know what you buy and when you buy it, so we’ll give you a suggestion when we think you need to buy a specific part. We’re trying to pre-empt and give a flavour of what you need to see and what you need to order.”

A training school is also a part of AD24, offering certified training courses and free help videos. There are also free customer support videos and technical documents – including access to parts manuals, service bulletins and drivers guides.

Since the service soft-launched, its growth has been substantial. Online sales have increased from £13k in April 2018 to £126k in April 2019. Pageviews per month have also increased from 12,000 to 47,000 over the same period. The site can also be found at www.ad24.direct.

From the CEO

ADL CEO Colin Robertson provided a Q&A session at the end of the event.

Asked about the long term market share of zero emission buses, Colin said: “I don’t see bus getting to 100% zero emission by 2040 like electric cars are prophesied to, because of the relative volume, lower scale, the varying duty cycles, the commercial pressures and the fact Euro VI, CNG and even hydrogen offer significant improvements to solve many problems,” he said. “There are still 20-25 year old vehicles in bus fleets around the world and air quality could be hugely improved by investing in clean diesel.

“In my working life – about 10 more years – I can see it getting up towards 50%.”

On electric coaches, Colin added: “It’s going to be duty cycle dependent. Some coach operators run 200k-300k kilometres per year and the vehicles never go cold, so would need some sort of battery interchange technology. Other coaches in other duty cycles could use similar infrastructure to bus.

“Yutong and BYD have developed EV coach models initially for the home market, but they clearly have growth ambitions outside the Chinese market. I do think a zero emissions coach will hit the road sooner rather than later in the UK.”

On ADL’s success this year, Colin commented: “The UK has been a tough market in the last few years. London has softened significantly and it is well chronicled about the big PLCs having profitability and rail franchise issues. Lots of that has manifested in reduced levels of capital investment, which has been tough on the UK manufacturing sector.

“We’ve done quite well in what has been a tough market, and thankfully we had started to look at being less dependent on the UK 10 years ago to find counter-cyclical markets.

“We are spending between £20m and £25m every year on new developments, which is something we could only have dreamed of a few years back. If you want to be at the forefront of technology and customers’ needs, then you need to be spending significantly on future development. We couldn’t have done that without the UK and international growth to offset the cost.

“AD24 is also not an insignificant investment, which is geared to make us easy to do business with.”

Colin said the company is aiming for the UK to represent just 40% of its business in five years’ time, which is necessary for it to hit its target of £1bn turnover. However it will still be looking to grow its UK market share. “I don’t think we will sustain a 60-70% share of the UK market, but that won’t stop us trying,” he said. “Growth will come from international sales.”

Colin was asked how ADL might collaborate with operators and trade associations to change the political agenda and getting the coach and bus industry’s message across. He responded: “As a responsible employer and manufacturer, I would like to think we have a part to play. I’ve met with the CPT to explore how we can work more closely with them and operator partners to lobby government.

“Local and national government have a part to play in tackling some of the bigger issues, like congestion, parking, bus priority and so on.
“We as manufacturers need to provide a high quality place to be seen on. Buses today are things of beauty. From being the transport mode of last resort 20-30 years ago, now nobody can doubt that a high-spec bus today is a quality piece of kit.

“If three or four key parties can galvanise the message, perhaps through a group like the CPT to bind them all together, why wouldn’t we go there? Let’s celebrate our successes.”
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