William Wright was born in the 1920s yet set a path for transport past the 2020s

The Wrightbus factory in Ballymena has in recent years been visited by mayors of London, prime ministers, chancellors of the exchequer and royalty.

The reason?

It is an outstanding British manufacturer that was chosen to produce vehicles such as an electric bus the replacement for the much-loved, hop-on hop-off red Routemaster buses that epitomised London for decades, then were scrapped and then re-instated in a more modern form by Boris Johnson.

Sir William Wright, the Co Antrim co-founder of what began as a small family business and ended up one of Northern Ireland’s largest employers, has died. The tributes have been flowing in to his memory, and no wonder. As we report today, Sir William was a man of deep Christian faith and an Ulster Unionist councillor, as well as an gifted businessman.

His Wrightbus was, as the former UUP leader Robin Swann says, a global brand.

Northern Ireland has in recent decades become very dependent on government subsidy from London.

But the success of Wrightbus shows that Northern Ireland still has a residual industrial ingenuity, harking back to the pre-partition tradition of manufacturing in sectors such a ship building.

NI has many excellent schools and it has the sort of reliable workforces valued by companies around the world.

It has huge potential to become a highly innovative part of the UK, as it is already proving in other spheres such as Cyber security.

Sir William Wright was in his mid 90s when he died, yet his legacy is one of helping to forge a path into environmental forms of transport for the late 21st century.

His William Wright Technology centre at Queen’s University promotes advanced engineering for the future, and is a fine tribute to this much loved entrepreneur.