Bid One: Rivals vie for huge windfall

Bid One: ASSOCIATED British Ports can offer land and a riverside berth suitable for a wind turbine manufacturing site "within two and a half years", according to one of its directors.

Matt Jukes, port director for Hull and Goole, said the Humber is the ideal geographical location for the three offshore wind farms planned for Dogger, Hornsea and Norfolk and is just 12 hours sailing time from the proposed sites.

ABP already has planning consent to build a riverside berth for unloading containers next to Alexandra Dock in Hull.

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The company is in talks with the local authority about amending this harbour revision order so the berth could be used for wind turbines instead.

An early drawback for ABP's bid is the lack of land currently available next to the proposed berth, but Mr Jukes is confident the company can deliver what a manufacturer might need.

He said: "There are options for in-filling part of the Alexandra Dock to release other adjacent areas of land which could facilitate over 100 hectares of development land adjacent to the berth."

ABP has been working with Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, on the plans and has met with the major players looking at sites in the area.

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Mr Jukes said it could take a year to get the revised order and 18 months to build the facility. He added: "This could be up and running in time for the requirements they need and sufficient area can be made available around it to be able to cater for a big manufacturing facility."

Mr Jukes said the Humber had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a centre of excellence for renewables.

He added: "This could be really big in terms of investment and job generation. The key point is to attract the first part of that cluster, the first big player to come here.

"The potential employment is far more than just the fabrication of the turbines themselves. There are the cables that link all the various turbines together and then linking to the land. There is the scour protection, which is the aggregate that sits around these turbines.

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"There are an awful lot of ancilliary bits which you don't necessarily think of in the first instance which are all going to require land and are all going to require being transported to the shortest distance possible in order to make these economically viable."

The next step for ABP will be to study Government announcements on the competition for 60m of public funding to develop port infrastructure.

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