PLANS to build the UK's biggest bioethanol plant in the North-East were yesterday welcomed by the region's business and farming leaders.

The £250m plant at Teesside's Wilton site, to be built by Ensus, which is based in Yarm, near Stockton, will mark the largest investment at Wilton for 17 years.

The Northern Echo revealed yesterday how the plans will bring hundreds of jobs to the North-East, and are predicted to sustain about 1,500 farming jobs.

Last night, Vera Baird, MP for Redcar, gave her support to the scheme. Ms Baird, who was involved in negotiations between Ensus and the Government, hailed the planned plant as a "sunrise" in her constituency.

She said: "It is a truism now that we are attracting this calibre of investment and that Wilton International is the processing cluster of the future.

"We are recycling our local manufacturing skills to ensure that opportunities like this benefit local families, as well as the wider local economy."

The plant will be fully operational by early 2009, producing 400 million litres of fuel annually. Ensus has already agreed a supply deal with Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell.

About 150,000 hectares of land - the equivalent of about 215,000 football pitches - will be needed to grow the 1.2 million tonnes of wheat needed each year.

Glencore Grain UK, based in Oxfordshire, will source the grain and has said it would buy locally where possible.

David Hugill, chairman of the North Riding and Durham County branch of the National Farmers' Union (NFU), said: "It gives arable farmers another potential market, but it is also a major opportunity for livestock farmers, because of the large quantities of by-products that are guaranteed by the process of turning wheat to fuel which will be an alternative source of stock feed."

Stewart Vernon, a member of the NFU's North-East regional arable committee and board member of the Home Grown Cereals Authority, said: "This is the best news. It will have a very positive effect on farming. The two markets will work alongside each other."

Business leaders elsewhere in the region also gave their backing to the plant.

Joanne Fryett, of the North-East Chamber of Commerce, said: "For decades, we have been a world-beating centre for chemicals and this remarkable investment by Ensus shows the faith that leading companies have in the ability of this region to deliver."

Dermot Roddy, chief executive of Renew Tees Valley, said: "The fact that Ensus has been able to gain the financial backing it needs to go ahead with the Wilton project demonstrates the increasing recognition of the opportunities in the renewable energy field - that must be good news for our area, which is now clearly the UK's key centre for a wide range of technologies."