We’re in it for the long haul, insists boss of steel firm
A BOSS behind a massive manufacturing plant coming to the former Redcar steelworks has insisted the firm is in it for the long haul.
More than 2,000 jobs were lost when the steelworks shut in 2016 – sending shockwaves through Teesside’s economy and destroying many livelihoods.
Efforts to bring manufacturing jobs back are under way at Teesworks – with South Korean firm SeAH Wind beginning construction of a vast 850m long monopile plant at South Bank this week.
As many as 750 direct jobs and 1,500 other positions have been touted. But Teesside has been burnt before when a big employer has either upped sticks or gone under.
And a wind jobs boost took a blow to the gut on Friday when reports revealed General Electric would no longer be pushing ahead with its own manufacturing plant on Teesside. SeAH sales manager David Jack told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he’d been involved in their wind project “from day one” and had been involved in getting the project over the line.
He said: “We’ve been talking about this project since 2019 and it’s taken until today to get spades in the ground.” SeAH relocated from its original site before opting for Teesside.
Mr Jack said opportunities and orders to be delivered in 2024/25 were the driver of the new plant. He added: “Customers have bought into the ambition we have and it really matches a lot of what the industry and the area wants and needs.
“We’re very happy to be part of it but it is still a risk. We’ve not taken it with having orders guaranteed.
“No-one has said: “we will give you X amount of monopiles, go build a factory” – we’ve had to take that risk by ourselves. That’s paid off – and it’s slightly different to what we see in the offshore wind industry where people generally want to be helped and advanced before they make one of these big investment decisions.
“We also feel by doing this it gives us an opportunity to get ahead of the competition who are looking at the UK.” SeAH’s plant will have a footprint around five times the size of a typical Amazon factory.
It will see 6,500 piles in the ground over the next 12 months to build the plant – and two cement manufacturing facilities will be built just to serve the project. Teessiders Gerard Trainer and Shuan Garbutt oversaw the official start of building work on Thursday.
Mr Jack was excited things were getting going. Asked if the firm was in it for the long haul, the SeAH manager pointed to how the company was a family owned business.
He added: “We don’t have the same shareholder restrictions or expectations. We take a long-term view of everything we do.
“This is the opportunity for our president Joosung Lee to really make a mark and change the direction of SeAH into what his vision of the future is going to be. SeAH Wind is a massive part of that.
“It’s a two-fold thing: we’re doing the right things for our business, but we’re doing the right thing by ownership, and these are long-term investments.
“If you look at us, we don’t close factories around the world – we’ve kept them open through difficult times and grown our business. Through difficulties, we’ve always been successful – that’s where we set ourselves as different from other people.”