Highly skilled complex chemical engineering sits behind a £100 million investment that could soon materialise on the Humber Bank.
Around 100 jobs have been envisaged as the first steps are taken on UK soil - specifically Saltend Chemicals Park - to start a magnet supply chain, feeding into the burgeoning offshore wind and electric vehicle markets.
Pensana Rare Earths Plc is establishing a mine in Angola and has eyed up the Humber as the place to process the oxides it extracts. And speaking to Business Live, chairman Paul Atherley explained how it has reached this stage, while mapping out what comes next.
“I’m keen to bring manufacturing back to the UK,” he said. “The particular manufacturing we are looking at is chemical engineering, which the UK is particularly good at. This is the highest form of value-adding, real complex chemistry.
“We identified three sites; Merseyside, Teesside and the Humber, and compared them against international sites, particularly Saxony in Germany, which had a lot of incentives with European Regional Development funding.
“We found they were equal to, if not better, than Saxony, with each having the potential for freeport, either ex-petrochemical or chemical sites and each of the three actively looking for investment. It was a very competitive situation.”
So how did Saltend take the spoils?
“What got Humber across the line was the Saltend facility,” Mr Atherley said. “An ex-BP chemicals plant, it has Ineos, BP, Air Products, a whole swathe of companies, and a set up a little bit like a WeWork for the chemical sector - you just plug and play.
“We arrive, build this state-of-the-art facility, and all the services - power, water, chemicals, waste disposal and port facilities, are all provided through the fence, and are all world class.”
The strong renewable attributes also appealed, together with the Europe-facing ports complex.
“Another thing was the response times from PX (site owner and operator), East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the Humber LEP and individual planning agents - everybody involved has been fantastic and that means a lot when you are trying to make a decision on location, you want to know people want to get behind it and be supportive of it. The Humber was Premier League in that respect.
“There’s then the £6 billion going into Dogger Bank, turbines full of permanent copper coil and magnets - tonnes of them - and just down the road in the Midlands the entire car industry is going to start producing electric vehicles - again requiring kilograms of magnets.”
