The UK's largest coach and bus builder announced 235 job losses today at its headquarters in Northern Ireland.

Wrightbus, one of the province's most successful export companies, called a series of lunchtime meetings with its 1,000 strong workforce at its base in Ballymena, County Antrim. The company supplies vehicles across the world.

The redundancies come just a month after it signed an £11m partnership deal with a Dutch coachbuilder to supply 57 buses for use in London by operator Arriva. But it is understood that amid the global economic recession two other substantial contracts have recently been cancelled, forcing job cuts.

Declan O'Loan, an SDLP Northern Ireland Assembly member for North Antrim said the job losses were a major blow for the area.

He said: "This is very unfortunate for the workers who will be affected. The loss of skilled well paid jobs will be a crisis for those families when there are not many alternative jobs around.

"Unfortunately companies have to react to the state of their order books, and the recession is hitting every sector.

"Wrightbus is a very successful company and its employee numbers have grown greatly in recent years. I have no doubt that in time the company will overcome this serious setback."

O'Loan called on Northern Ireland's power sharing government to revise its budget in order to rescue the local economy.

"Job losses like this explain why I have called on the finance minister to rewrite the budget to deal with the new situation. We need to put more resources into supporting manufacturers to maintain employment and into re-skilling," he added.