Windfarm investment to spur UK port competition

The UK’s ports are to gain from the recent windfarm industry budget promises. Siemens AG is to build a wind turbine factory located at a port site in the UK, creating around 700 jobs with more in the supply chain.

Siemens believes the £60m (around $100m) pot of money available from the recent budget will spur a number of the UK’s ports into bidding for the funding in order to grow a port facility to handle wind farm technology.

Depending on the ports’ success, it is envisaged that Siemens will then be able to go forward with plans for most appropriate facility, probably on a site on the east or north east coast of England. Siemens in turn has promised to bring another £80m to the industrial development.

Andreas J Goss, Siemens’s chief executive officer in the UK, said that the recent budget “gives us confidence that the appropriate UK port infrastructure can be made available”.

This follows an announcement of General Electric’s intention to spend around E113m ($152m) on an offshore turbine factory in the UK that will employ 1,900 people, and last month work started on an offshore-turbine blade plant in Newcastle, that is looking at employing 500 people in a decade’s time.

Lastly, the European power division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is to invest heavily in a research facility in the UK.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust commented on this by saying that the UK’s offshore wind industry has taken a major step forward, adding that “Siemens and GE's back to back decisions to invest in the UK to build new wind turbine factories is a clear sign that we are not just open for business but we are now winning business.” He goes on to say, “Offshore wind is a priority for the UK as it can not only deliver a quarter of our electricity needs but also generate some 220,000 jobs and £65bn of net economic benefit over the next forty years."

Source: Port Strategy