First AberdeenCompanies House extract company no SC097420
First Aberdeen Limited formerly Grampian Regional Transport Limited is the main bus company operator in

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

, Scotland. It is a subsidiary of

FirstGroup FirstGroup plc is a British multi-national transport group, based in Aberdeen, Scotland.Aberdeen Corporation Tramways was formed on 26 August 1898. The company was renamed Aberdeen Corporation Transport Department when it became solely a bus operator with trams ceasing on 3 May 1958.

Grampian Regional Transport

Under local government reorganisation in 1975, the Aberdeen Corporation bus operations transferred to Grampian Regional Transport, a department of the Grampian Regional Authority. To comply with the

Transport Act 1985 The Transport Act 1985 (c. 67) was an act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It introduced privatised and deregulated bus services throughout Great Britain and came into effect in October 1986. The act was created as a response to growing ...

, Grampian Regional Transport was incorporated in 1986, with the Grampian Regional Authority retaining ownership. In January 1989 the company was privatised under an

employee stock ownership plan Employee stock ownership, or employee share ownership, is where a company's employees own shares in that company (or in the parent company of a group of companies). US employees typically acquire shares through a share option plan. In the UK, Emp ...

led by its general manager Moir Lockhead.The History of 395 King Street
FirstGroup At the time GRT operated a fleet of 200 buses and 500 employees. Unlike future similar sales in the UK, the sale of Grampian Regional Transport was done voluntarily by the council which had no overall majority party and had no deep rooted objection to the sale. At the time, councils could negotiate privately with single buyers, rather than the later practice of competitive bidding. It was a sale of a going concern, rather than as seen in other areas in later years, a distress sale, or a forced sale for political reasons.

First Grampian

While the company continued to operate as GRT in Aberdeen, its holding company GRT Bus Group expanded through acquisition purchasing six former nationalised bus companies in England and Scotland. In April 1994 GRT Bus Group became a public limited company. In April 1995 FirstBus was formed through the merger of the Badgerline and GRT Bus Groups, with fleets in England, Wales and Scotland. Aberdeen was selected as the headquarters. In February 1998 Grampian Regional Transport was rebranded as First Aberdeen.

Liveries

Aberdeen Corporation had a dark green and white livery, later becoming pea-green and cream. Council owned Grampian Regional Transport changed this livery, by removing the upper green band, replacing it with a thinner orange band, with Grampian fleetnames and a council crest. When privatised, a scheme with a larger area of cream base colour, supplemented by a two-tone green stripe pattern was adopted. The cream base and stripe layout would become the corporate livery for the GRT Group, albeit with different colours for the stripes. The First Grampian livery consisted of the existing livery, with the fleetname changed to the FirstBus corporate style with the stylised ''f'' symbol. FirstGroup corporate livery was adopted in 1998 upon being rebranded as First Aberdeen.

Fleet

BG58OMC First Aberdeen 11108 Mercedes-Benz Citaro G

As of March 2013 the First Aberdeen fleet consisted of 173 buses and coaches. The most common bus models as of 2025 are Alexander Dennis Enviro300, Wright StreetLite and Yutong E12 single-deckers, as well as the double decker Wright StreetDeck, Alexander Dennis Enviro400 &

Volvo B9TL The Volvo B9TL is a low-floor double-decker bus built by Volvo Buses, Volvo from 2002 until 2018. It superseded the Volvo Super Olympian and the Volvo B7TL. The 2-axle version has been superseded by the Volvo B5TL in 2014 and the 3-axle version ...

Wright Eclipse Gemini The Wright Eclipse Gemini is a Low-floor bus, low-floor double-decker bus body that was built by Wrightbus between 2001 and 2021, based on the single-decker Wright Eclipse design. The second-generation Eclipse Gemini 2 was launched in 2009, fo ...

. A mainstay of the Grampian Regional Transport fleet in the 1970s up to 1983 was the

Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...

AL Type bodied

Leyland Atlantean The Leyland Atlantean is a predominantly double-decker bus chassis manufactured by Leyland Motors between 1958 and 1986. Only 17 Atlantean chassis were bodied as single deck from new. It pioneered the design of rear-engined, front entrance ...

, supplemented by the

Leyland National The Leyland National is an integrally constructed British step-floor single-decker bus manufactured in large quantities between 1972 and 1985. It was developed as a joint project between two UK nationalised industries – the National Bus Com ...

single-decker bus. In 1985 it moved to Alexander RH bodied Leyland Olympian double-deckers until 1988. From 1991 to 1997 the company steadily bought the Mercedes-Benz O405 single-decker. Grampian Regional Transport was one of the first UK users of

articulated bus An articulated bus, also referred to as a slinky bus, bendy bus, tandem bus, vestibule bus, stretch bus, or an accordion bus, is an articulated vehicle, typically a motor bus or trolleybus, used in public transportation. It is usually a ...

es, taking delivery of a single

-bodied articulated Mercedes-Benz O405G in November 1992. Aberdeen is one of the major locations for articulated buses in the United Kingdom with around 35 in the fleet in December 2013.FirstGroup Fleetlist
Steve White In 2014, First Aberdeen purchased 26 Wright StreetLite micro-hybrid buses. First Aberdeen were the world's first operator of double-decker hydrogen fuel cell buses, taking delivery of 15

Wright StreetDeck Hydroliner The Wright StreetDeck is an integral double-decker bus manufactured by Wrightbus since 2014, originally delivered as standard with a Daimler AG, Daimler OM934 diesel engine. Hybrid-electric, full-electric and hydrogen-powered variants have subse ...

s in January 2021. These were initially taken off the road in January 2022 due to technical faults and were temporarily replaced with

Euro VI The European emission standards are vehicle emission standards that regulate pollution from the use of new land surface vehicles sold in the European Union and European Economic Area member states and the United Kingdom, and ships in European ...

diesel buses loaned from

First Glasgow First Glasgow is the largest bus company serving the Greater Glasgow area in Scotland. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. The company operates within the area covered by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, a public body responsible for h ...

. The first of these returned to service in April 2022. 10 more joined the fleet in April 2022, bringing the total fleet of Hydroliners to 25, which would be joined by 24 Yutong E12

battery electric bus A battery electric bus is an electric bus that is driven by an electric motor and obtains energy from on-board batteries. Many trolleybuses use batteries as an auxiliary or emergency power source. Battery electric buses offer the potential for z ...

es in July 2023, and 24 Wright Streetdeck Electroliners and repowered Streetdecks from March 2025.

King Street headquarters

The company has occupied a historic depot site at 395 King Street at the heart of the city since 1914. It was built in 1862 and bought by Aberdeen Corporation Tramways The site has also served as global headquarters of FirstGroup since its formation in 1995. On 21 June 2007 First gained permission to redevelop the site into a new Aberdeen bus depot and global FirstGroup headquarters building. It was officially opened by

Anne, Princess Royal Anne, Princess Royal (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise; born 15 August 1950) is a member of the British royal family. She is the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the only sister of King ...

on 15 July 2010.The Princess Royal opens FirstGroup's new Aberdeen base
''BBC News'' 15 July 2010

Revenue

Most First Aberdeen services are operated commercially, an exception to this is the council subsidised Service 40 which operates from Guild Street to Dubford on Sundays. The company operates an exact fare policy, whereby no change is given by the driver, though they also allow

contactless payment Contactless payment systems are credit cards and debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near-field communication (NFC) for making sec ...

along with payment through the First Bus app on the Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

mobile operating systems. The fleet was one of two divisions in FirstBus picked to trial the new "ticketer" ticket machines at the start of 2017.

References

External links

* {{FirstGroup Bus operators in Scotland FirstGroup companies