Key site closures are seen as 'temporary blip' (From The Northern Echo)

Key site closures are seen as 'temporary blip'

12:43pm Tuesday 8th September 2009 in

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THE run of closures at a key site in Teesside’s process cluster has been coming since chemical giant ICI left 20 years ago, a key figure in the sector has said.

Philip Jones said the fact Wilton has seen several plants announce their closures is “no great surprise” after the break-up of the ICI cluster saw numerous independent companies move into the site, near Redcar.

However, Mr Jones, chief executive of the National Skills Academy Process Industries (NASPI), said he believes the future of Wilton and the wider £10bn North- East process cluster remains bright, with plans for the Darlington- based academy to train 24,000 apprentices and 10,000 graduates to plug the anticipated future skills gap unaffected despite the “temporary blip” in the industry.

In the past few months, four Wilton sites, together employing more than 600 people, have been affected – Invista has closed, and Croda and Dow, the UK’s only etholyne oxide producer, have announced their closures.

Neighbouring Artenius has been put into administration, with the site mothballed until a buyer is secured. Mr Jones, who had a 14-year career with chemical giant BASF before joining NSAPI, said the downfall of some parts of the former ICI Wilton site – hailed as a trailblazer for the international chemical industry when it opened in 1949 – has been coming since ICI left in the Eighties.

Speaking to The Northern Echo, he said: “When Wilton was broken up, all these individual companies started to rely on each other commercially, and have their own commercial interests to pursue – very different to how it was under ICI, when they were all divisions of the same group.

“When you are looking at independent companies, when one fell over, there is always a risk another, or others, will do the same. I think what has happened recently has been coming for 20 years. It has been a long time coming, but it has happened. Now it is important we make something out of it and move on.”

Mr Jones said that Wilton has a strong future in green technologies – with recent announcements including the creation of a world-leading industrial biotechnology (IB) facility – which can be coupled with growth in the process sector. He added: “The requirement for thousands of people to be trained to fill the impending skills gap has not changed – what has happened is a temporary blip. We are still going to have a process industry at the end of it.

“The average age of a process operator is 55, and the average age of a supervisor is 57. Within ten years they will need replacing, and our estimated numbers are conservative, they are too low if anything.

I am in no doubt whatsoever that this industry has a thriving future. I think if there were to be any big fallout from what has happened recently, it would have happened by now. Now, we can only hope the upturn will come sooner rather than later.”