An Antrim-based bus building company, Robert Wright & Son, is investing £4.5 million sterling (€6.6 million) in an Industrial Development Board-backed scheme to double the company's manufacturing capacity and provide 118 new jobs, bringing the total to nearly 500.

Dr Alan Gillespie, chairman of the Industrial Development Board, said Robert Wright, based at the Galgorm Industrial Estate, in Ballymena, was well positioned to benefit from the growing 12-metre single deck bus segment which has a 50 per cent market share.

"The company has been very successful in this area because it pioneered the development of low-floor buses in the UK back in the early 1990s," he said.