Review of the year sector by sector

MANUFACTURING

IT may come as a surprise to some, but land-locked Darlington is a world leader in offshore energy work.

That’s why throughout the year, firms from the town and across the wider region increased their presence in the subsea sector, showing off their manufacturing prowess to global audiences.

DeepOcean secured work to dig underwater trenches on a Scottish renewable energy project, while fellow Darlington company, offshore protection specialist MTE Ltd, said it would supply fire and blast walls to South Korean firms Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries.

Darlington’s Subsea Innovation, specialising in launch and recovery systems for remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), opened a new plant to take on more work, including projects in Australia and the Middle-East.

Elsewhere, the icons of North-East industry, steel and car production, continued to support thousands of jobs.

Sunderland-based Nissan pushed towards the annual 500,000 vehicle mark again, despite a temporary shutdown due to press shop faults, with Redcar’s iron and steelmaker SSI UK in the black for the first time since production restarted more than two years ago.

Fellow steelmaker Tata revealed

Staying on the theme of regional manufacturing heritage, clothing maker The AMA Group returned the industry back to its North-East heartland by setting up base in Peterlee, east Durham, and quickly picked up work from Sports Direct and Tesco.

The Centre for Process and Innovation started work to build a £38m National Biologics Manufacturing Centre, in Darlington’s Central Park, which will open next year to research and develop potentially life-saving cures and vaccines.

Dehumidifier maker Ebac branched out to make chest freezers, and, as it heads into 2015, is just weeks from becoming the UK’s only washing machine manufacturer.

TRANSPORT

UPGRADE ANNOUNCED: The A1 at Bowburn. The road is to be upgraded to motorway status, it has been announced

DURHAM Tees Valley Airport continued to operate regular services to Aberdeen and Amsterdam that are vital gateways to the oil and gas industry and international markets. But its neighbour on the outskirts of Newcastle stole the headlines when it regained the region’s Transatlantic link.

Flights from Newcastle International to New York, with United Airlines, will begin in May allowing passengers to be in the States in just under eight hours. “This is game changing for the North-East,” said a jubilant airport chief Dave Laws, who added the proviso: “We now need the region to get behind it.”

The long awaited upgrades to the A1 and A19 were confirmed by the government. The Chancellor was so excited to lay claim to the projects he re-announced them in this month’s Autumn Statement in a bid to convince North-East voters that his northern powerhouses plan does not stop at Manchester. Nevertheless, the HS2 and HS3 superfast rail schemes include our region as an afterthought.

Despite calls for it to remain in public control a joint venture between Stagecoach and Virgin won the franchise to run the East Coast mainline rail route from March 2015.

On a positive note Teesport, Port of Tyne and Port of Sunderland all reported very strong years, underlining their importance to the region’s export success.

The opening of AV Dawson’s multi-modal terminal in Middlesbrough showcased the incredible progress made by a business that was started 75 years ago with £50 and a horse called Dina.

ENERGY

IT would be nice to report that 2014 was the year when ministers finally gave industry a clear direction on energy policy. Instead a combination of Coalition squabbles, carbon taxes, falling oil prices, crumbling infrastructure and fears over winter black-outs fed the mood of uncertainty.

The problems faced by the Tag Energy Solution wind turbine plant near Billingham – that was tipped to create 500 jobs – was forced to close as orders ground to a halt. Denmark’s Bladt Industries and Germany’s EEW SPC have taken control of the site and plant to launch a joint venture and restart production in 2015.

The region’s reputation as a centre for converting landfill waste to energy took a major step forward with investment in facilities at Wilton, Middlesbrough and the Emerald Biogas facility at Newton Aycliffe.

TECHNOLOGY

LOOKING AHEAD: A technician at Kromek, based at Netpark

OXFORD Dictionaries’ might have chosen Vape as its word of the year but the buzzword across all industries in 2014 was ‘innovation.’

The region’s Local Enterprise Partnerships, and emerging businesses such as Durham City’s Atom Bank made innovation an intrinsic part of their activities.

The digital sector is growing in importance across the region both as an employer that prevents a brain drain from our colleges and universities, and as a paragon of original thinking that can be adopted across all sectors.

Exciting plans to expand Netpark at Sedgefield, the ongoing success of Newcastle Science City, Digital City and Sunderland’s development as a national software hub, pointed the way forward.

CPI’s ongoing investment helped businesses to hone their ideas into commercial products. It is of the North-East businesses working to find a practical application for ‘wonder material’ graphene.

REGIONAL POLICY

IN an unprecedented show of solidarity The Northern Echo joined forces with newspapers on Tyneside, Teesside and the North West to demand a devolution deal for the north that matched the powers being handed to Scotland.

Despite bold soundbites from ministers about “northern powerhouses” it remains to be seen if the government is serious about wresting major spending powers from the hands of Whitehall.

In the meantime, regional power brokers prepared the ground by joining forces. A combined super authority for Durham, Tyne & Wear and Northumberland looks set to be followed by a similar arrangement for Tees Valley. Metropolitan mayors are back on the agenda too as it became clear that calls for regional devolution will be impossible for any of the main parties to ignore in the run up to the General Election on May 7.

CONSTRUCTION

TRAIN BUILDING: A view of work on Hitachi's Aycliffe factory

FAMILY-RUN steel company Finley Structures, in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, was awarded a multi-million pound deal to return train-building back to its rightful home.

Darlington contractor Shepherd Construction gave Finley the task of constructing the steel frame of the main factory at Hitachi Rail Europe’s new £82m base on Aycliffe Business Park.

Housebuilders revealed rising buyer confidence was galvanising the market, with Persimmon, Barratt Developments, and Bellway all reporting stronger sales.

Former military personnel were given the chance of a new career as York-based Persimmon revealed its Combat to Construction programme.

Supported by Darlington training provider Nordic Focus Training Group, it aims to create up to 500 posts a year.

However, a think-tank’s report warned a lack of bricks and bricklayers were holding back the building trade’s recovery.

But an announcement from Carillion Training Services’, which has UK bases including a site near Middlesbrough, that it was taking on 5,000 apprentices nationally over five years, was seen as a start to ease those fears.

Prime Minister David Cameron came to the region to laud £290m road-building plans, which include dualling the A1 to within 25 miles of the Scottish border.

The move was welcomed in the majority, though some critics said another 25-mile stretch was going untouched and would lead to congestion.

CHEMICALS

SHALE FOCUS: Sabic's Teesside base

IT’S a controversial subject, but shale gas, or fracking, was responsible for delivering a significant lift to the region’s chemical and process industry sector.

Hundreds of North-East chemicals jobs were secured when Teesside’s Sabic joined the shale gas revolution.

Bosses revealed its famous cracker plant would be converted to run on ethane from the US to cut costs and secure the business’ future.

Redcar and Cleveland College also announced it would train the next generation of oil and gas workers, acting as a national hub to nurture engineers for shale gas work.

The move is part of Government plans to create a National Centre for Oil and Gas, aimed at targeting the shale gas market, which ministers say could create more than 60,000 supply chain jobs.

The resurgence of a formerly mothballed refinery continued as CropEnergiesAG, owners of the former Ensus plant in Wilton, near Redcar, reported higher production.

The German firm, one of Europe’s largest bioethanol producers, uses wheat to create bioethanol, which is added to petrol.

One of Tees Valley’s oldest companies, Chemoxy International, expanded to create jobs.

The firm has a base in Billingham, near Stockton, with its Middlesbrough refinery the site where, in 1869, industrialist Samuel Sadler founded a tar distillery starting the region’s chemical process industry.

From the old to the new and Applied Graphene Materials, near Redcar, said it wanted to triple its workforce after an £11m flotation extended its work on wonder substance graphene.

Thomas Swan and Co, in Consett, County Durham, also started a pilot project to make the revolutionary product, which experts say could conduct electricity a million times better than copper, despite being as thin as a human hair.