Shout itfrom therooftops

Aug 5 2008 by jez Davison, Evening Gazette

JEZ DAVISON believes Teesside’s finest assets need to be backed by serious PR welly...

THE NEWS that one of the world’s largest renewable energy plants is coming to Teesside underlines the area’s ability to compete on a global stage. The next - and bigger - challenge is to make the rest of the world believe it.

Certainly, MGT Power does. The Westminster-based renewables experts behind the biomass plant have hailed local skills and the “entrepreneurial” talent of PD Ports as major factors that swayed their decision.

So why is it that some people outside of the area still refer to Teesside as perennial underachievers and believe its modern-day culture can be defined by the ‘cloth caps and whippets’ image of the 1970s?

Perhaps even more worrying, why is it that people - including a minority of locals - still talk down the area instead of promoting its finest assets?

The answer to both these questions probably lies in Teesside’s late arrival at the PR talking shop.

While other regions - notably London - pushed themselves to the front of the queue years ago, Teesside only recently came knocking at the door of a global audience.

At the risk of generalising, local firms haven’t been pushy enough when it comes to crowing about their successes outside the confines of the UK. Nor has Teesside been very good at marketing itself as a multi-talented, global-thinking sub-region.

In recent years, though, Teesside has begun to get its PR act together and is showing the rest of the world what it can do.

Building on this momentum is Teesside’s next challenge.

Industry is making this easier by providing several success stories which are attracting inward investment, creating jobs and swelling the local economy’s coffers.

These include the £400m Tees biomass plant - which will create 600 construction jobs and hundreds more throughout the local supply chain - and Ensus’ £250m bioethanol plant at Wilton, designed to boost home-grown production of bio-fuel and open up new markets for local farmers.

These demonstrate why Teesside has every right to promote itself as a world-leading sub-region - and why the cups of local people should be half full, not half empty.