Saltend Chemical Park delivering on potential
INVESTMENT PAYING OFF
ASWOOP for Saltend Chemicals Park in early 2018 is rapidly emerging as a shrewd move for PX Group as the potential becomes reality for one of the Humber’s most strategically important heavy industry sites.
Last summer saw it selected by Equinor for hydrogen production and as the year closed Pensana Rare Earths outlined plans for magnet metal processing there.
With Ineos completing on the reunification of a significant element of the 370 acre site as it takes on the BP plant, the split which part-created the opportunity, while also overhauling major operations and Tricoya also topping off on the construction materials plant, Saltend has never been far from the business news headlines on the burgeoning Energy Estuary.
Garry Gibbon, group commercial manager, told how Pensana is the first “new” entity to emerge in PX ownership.
In selecting the Humber region, chairman Paul Atherley told how the Saltend facility had seen off competition from Merseyside, Grangemouth and Germany, due to the plug and play nature of the park - as well as the complex chemical engineering capabilities.
“We are absolutely delighted to welcome Pensana on to the site,” Mr Gibbon said, as work progresses to fund and consent a £100m plant that could create 100 jobs.
“We bought the site as the operating company in March 2018 and this is the first company that has committed over the two years,” he said. “We‘ve had a number of enquiries, some of which are in the development stage, but Covid has played a big part in slowing things down from an investment point of view.
“The Pensana enquiry came through the Humber LEP, Phil Glover (business development manager there) brought it in, and it has been turned around very quickly. The initial enquiry was only in November, and we have done an extraordinary amount of work in that short time to convince Pensana to come to Saltend against competition we knew was across the UK.
“We got them on site very quickly, managed in a safe and secure way, they saw the plot of land they are looking to develop on, and that was great.”
As Mr Atherley stated to the Mail last month, it was the access to the vital utilities that helped get the Humber across the line.
“We offer a number of support services, so they don’t have to build in infrastructure such as power, steam and water; we can provide all that. That is a big part of the attraction - it can mean multi-million pound investments do not have to be made, it can save a substantial amount.”
Pensana will join the likes of BP and Ineos, potentially wholly Ineos even within the six month window being eyed, as well as Nippon Gohsei, Tricoya, part BP owned, Air Products, Perenco, the mothballed Vivergo Fuels plant and on-site Triton Power Station.
“What we do find through a lot of the enquiries is businesses like the idea of being alongside big blue chip companies,” Mr Gibbon said. “For some businesses, a feedstock is someone else’s waste product. There’s an attraction for small businesses too, engineering companies to service these companies - becoming on-site workshops almost.”
Patrick Pogue is PX Group’s commercial development director, and while there are 110 acres of brownfield development land to fill. he is acutely aware that such arrivals quickly fill the voids.
Mr Pogue was involved in the acquisition of the top tier Comah site from BP, and he told how the opportunities understood at the time are now emerging.
“We have Tricoya in construction, we have Equinor coming forward with H2H Saltend, now Pensana. These big investment projects take many years to come about, so for them to happen at the moment, particularly in Covid, is quite amazing.
“It is in part down to the work we have been doing in the two years since we took over.
“We are also getting support from the LEP, and we’ve also been in regular dialogue with the Department for International Trade and the local authority, which is all part of the wider engagement. The support we get for this strategic site is fantastic, and that’s why we are having this success.”
The “complex carve-out” from BP involves the transfer of 50 BP staff and the management responsibility of more than 150 contract staff.
While BP retained manufacturing assets and the petrochemicals technology centre, with the former part of a global $5b deal agreed with Ineos, PX took on the vessel jetty, bulk storage tanks, utility distribution systems, road loading facilities, central control room, workshops, labs and numerous other buildings.
“Equinor is a major project and Pensana has quite a large footprint for plant,” he said. “Saltend will start to fill up. There is still development capacity and we can free up land and look at different areas and repurposing, we also work quite closely with the port, and there is further development potential - we don’t want to be constrained, if we can remodel and re-use we will.”
Footprint and diversity of operations makes it the jewel in the PX Group portfolio, with St Fergus gas plant in Aberdeenshire another notable site.
“We’d like to go wider and do more in the Humber, and Saltend gives us that platform,” Mr Pogue said. “Our heritage is in Teesside, but we’re in the Humber now, and it is a big industrial heartland.”