BAE Systems will finish Army work before site closure
Workers at a Black Country plant due to close this year are strengthening Army vehicles to protect British soldiers from mines and roadside bombs.
Workers at a Black Country plant due to close this year are strengthening Army vehicles to protect British soldiers from mines and roadside bombs.
Workers at BAE Systems in Wolverhampton are working on the project equipping Scimitar reconnaisance vehicles with tougher new hulls and a range of other kit to protect their crews.
Most of the 50 workers at the factory in Spring Road, Ettingshall, will lose their jobs when the site is closed at the end of this year.
Seventeen are to be transferred to BAE's plant at Telford, to continue with the work, and the rest face redundancy. A further 20 have left since the announcement in April.
Before the shutdown, the Wolverhampton factory, which previously made mobile military bridges, is working almost full-time on the programme to upgrade 50 military vehicles.
In addition to the Scimitar Mk 2 reconnaissance vehicle, Spartan troop carriers, Samson repair and recovery vehicles, Sultan command post vehicles and Samaritan ambulances are being overhauled at a total cost of nearly £30 million.
Some of the Scimitar armoured cars are now being used by the 9th/12th Royal Lancers in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The rest are all due to be delivered by early 2012.
The new Telford design, based on the Spartan hull, is fabricated from aluminium at the Wolverhampton site and incorporates a range of design changes to improve mine blast protection.