Teesside business review 2010 - Part 1
Dec 21 2010 by Karen McLauchlan, Evening Gazette
THERE’S no denying it’s been a tough year for business in 2010. As the region began to pull itself out of recession, a change of Government signalled major belt-tightening by Whitehall. And now millions of pounds of cost savings and hundreds of job cuts must be made within Teesside’s public sector. But there’s also been good news such as major investments for our green energy sector and hope that a deal will soon be completed to see steelmaking re-started at the Teesside Cast Products site. Karen McLauchlan takes a look back at the local economy’s highs and lows in 2010.
JANUARY
The new year was blighted by snow and plunging temperatures - which cost North-east firms around £250m in the first week of the year. Figures from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) showed industry was losing around £50m a day.
A strategically critical plant in the UK chemical supply chain made its last batch of ethylene oxide (EO). Dow said it would follow through on plans to close the country’s only EO and glycol facility at Wilton after it failed to find a buyer for the business or its assets.
Passenger numbers at Durham Tees Valley Airport collapsed to 300,000 - less than half of those passing through the gates just two years ago.
The £300m Ensus bioethanol plant at Wilton went into production.
A £125m fund designed to support North-east businesses for the next five years was launched. The Finance for Business North East Fund, formerly called Jeremie, aimed to support up to 850 small and medium-sized businesses and create more than 5,000 jobs.
Korean firm KP Chemical Corporation stepped in to bring Wilton International-based chemicals business Artenius UK out of administration. More than 250 people lost their jobs when the speciality chemicals maker was put into administration by its Spanish parent company La Seda, but the Korean company said 130 jobs would be created and 41 secured by the deal.
FEBRUARY
A brass band played outside the gates of Teesside Cast Products as work began to mothball the Redcar plant, with the loss of 1,600 jobs.
The move was sparked by the decision of a consortium of investors to walk away from a 10-year deal with the plant last May, and came despite a campaign to find a buyer.
Steel giant Corus - now Tata Steel - stressed it was “mothballing, not closure”.
The mothballing process brought to an end 150 years of steelmaking on Teesside.
Thai steel company SSI would eventually stepped in to sign a memorandum of understanding for the sale in August.
There was good news for Teesside engineering firm Aker Solutions when the team clinched a £115m green-energy contract. It won the contract from energy company RWE to provide design, supply, installation, construction and commissioning for a new 50MW biomass renewable energy plant at the Tullis Russell Papermakers plant near Fife in Scotland.
Biffa Polymers, formerly Greenstar WES, was handed a multi million pound grant to become the first non-bottle plastics recycler of its kind in the UK.
