By CASEY NEILL
Bombardier’s big year has continued with a Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame award nomination.
The Dandenong-based business was a finalist for the Large Manufacturer of the Year title but lost out to Broadmeadows-based CSL Behring at the 9 June awards ceremony.
Bombardier is the only manufacturer of both trains and trams in Australia, has more than 22 locations across the country, and designs, engineers, manufactures and maintains its vehicles in Victoria.
The company has cemented its place in the state’s manufacturing landscape over the past 60 years and works directly with more than 600 Victorian suppliers across its projects.
Its FLEXITY E-Class trams have more than 50 per cent local content, its VLocity DMU trains 66.5 per cent, and the Adelaide A-City EMU trains 68 per cent.
Bombardier now employs more than 700 people in Victoria alone.
The Journal last week reported that Bombardier Transportation celebrated delivering the final 43 VLocity carriages for the Regional Rail Link – five months ahead of schedule.
The manufacturer also marked completing the Refresh Program with an event at its Dandenong plant on Thursday 2 June.
Refresh introduced new intermediate carriages to convert the VLocity trains from two to three-carriage sets.
The State Government’s 2016-17 budget included 27 additional VLocity cars on top of a 21-carriage order the previous year.
On Tuesday 15 March the Government announced that it would nearly double its high-capacity train order from 37 seven-carriage sets to 65.
Bombardier is in the running for the contract with Eureka Rail and Evolution Rail the competition.
An announcement is expected late this year.
