About

Aycliffe Business Park is the biggest single employment area in County Durham and one of the largest business parks in the UK…

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Some of the park’s biggest employers include high-profile businesses such as Gestamp Tallent, Hitachi Rail Europe, 3M, INEOS Group, Husqvarna and PWS.

While engineering and manufacturing remain at the core of Aycliffe Business Park, a number of new developments in recent years have brought dozens more SMEs from the services and leisure sectors to the park, creating a vibrant, busy employment hub and a wide variety of industries.

Located just off the A1(M), Aycliffe Business Park is located at the heart of the North East with key road, rail, air and sea links on its doorstep.

Darlington train station is just 6 miles away, providing direct and speedy rail links to London, Edinburgh and the rest of the UK.

Aycliffe Business Park is also just 11 miles from Teesside Airport, 18 miles from Teesport and 39 miles from Newcastle Airport.

Aycliffe Business Park emanates from World War II – with its original buildings, ammunitions factories, built in 1940.

The 867-acre group of buildings was named Royal Ordnance Factory 59 – one of several around the country – which were designed to manufacture bombs and bullets for the war effort.

ROF 59, which was visited by then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, employed more than 17,000 people, mainly women, from the surrounding area, who risked their lives every day, filling shells and bullets and assembling detonators and fuses.

By its nature, the work was very dangerous and many workers were killed and injured during the manufacturing process.

The people who worked there became known as the Aycliffe Angels after English Language propaganda broadcasts by Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce), a traitor who worked for the Nazis during World War II.

“The Little angels of Aycliffe won’t get away with it,” he had said in numerous broadcasts, highlighting the importance of their work, before insisting the Luftwaffe would bomb them into submission.

A permanent memorial was placed in Newton Aycliffe town centre commemorating the Aycliffe Angels’ efforts, while there’s a small museum within the Inovyn factory (formerly known as Ineos) on the business park.

After the war, the ordnance buildings were then used for manufacturing, and over the years more and more businesses moved to the area as the new town of Newton Aycliffe grew.

In September 2015, just over 70 years since the end of World War II, Hitachi Rail Europe’s 21st Century, £82m factory was officially opened by the then Prime Minister David Cameron on Aycliffe Business Park, bringing train building back to the nearby ‘Cradle of the Railways’ in Shildon.

Aycliffe Business Park emanates from World War II – with its original buildings, ammunitions factories, built in 1940.

The 867-acre group of buildings was named Royal Ordnance Factory 59 – one of several around the country – which were designed to manufacture bombs and bullets for the war effort.

ROF 59, which was visited by then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, employed more than 17,000 people, mainly women, from the surrounding area, who risked their lives every day, filling shells and bullets and assembling detonators and fuses.

By its nature, the work was very dangerous and many workers were killed and injured during the manufacturing process.

The people who worked there became known as the Aycliffe Angels after English Language propaganda broadcasts by Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce), a traitor who worked for the Nazis during World War II.

“The Little angels of Aycliffe won’t get away with it,” he had said in numerous broadcasts, highlighting the importance of their work, before insisting the Luftwaffe would bomb them into submission.

A permanent memorial was placed in Newton Aycliffe town centre commemorating the Aycliffe Angels’ efforts, while there’s a small museum within the Inovyn factory (formerly known as Ineos) on the business park.

After the war, the ordnance buildings were then used for manufacturing, and over the years more and more businesses moved to the area as the new town of Newton Aycliffe grew.

In September 2015, just over 70 years since the end of World War II, Hitachi Rail Europe’s 21st Century, £82m factory was officially opened by the then Prime Minister David Cameron on Aycliffe Business Park, bringing train building back to the nearby ‘Cradle of the Railways’ in Shildon.

Location...

Situated to the south of County Durham, the business park has road links to the A167 to Durham and Darlington, plus the A1 with its access to Yorkshire and the South.

The park is also highly accessible via public transport, including bus services to Darlington and Durham and train services via Heighington and Newton Aycliffe stations (both easily accessible to the park).

  • 1 mile to A1(M)
  • 6 miles to Darlington Train Station
  • 11 miles to Teesside Airport
  • 18 miles to Teesport
  • 20 miles to Durham Train Station
  • 33 miles to Newcastle
  • 34 miles to the Port of Tyne
  • 39 miles to Newcastle Airport