Your browser does not support SVG Excellent logistics infrastructure is a key requirement for businesses investing in large-scale industrial facilities. It can also be prohibitively expensive to build from scratch. Which is why it usually makes sense for companies to invest in places where a concentration of industry has already given rise to a complex of freight transport infrastructure and services. In other words, it’s one of the reasons why investing businesses choose to locate within established industrial clusters.

Power – a headache for investing businesses For high energy use businesses, finding a site with a suitable grid connection can be difficult, time consuming and expensive, according to commercial property specialists Lambert Smith Hampton. “Industrial companies are struggling to find sites with large power supplies,” a company representative says. “It can take over a year for a supply to be installed and the capital outlay is significant”. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Peak Resources, to name just one recent investor, chose the site over international competitors for their multi-million pound investment in a minerals refining facility.

Perhaps the first thing a visitor to Wilton International notices is the sheer scale of the site. At 2,000 acres (809 hectares) it’s vast, and home to an array of large-scale industrial operations including green energy generation, chemicals manufacturing, biofuels production and plastics recycling. Wilton International began as an integrated manufacturing site owned and operated by the chemicals giant ICI. Following that company’s business divestment programme in the 1990s and 2000s, the site’s energy and manufacturing assets were acquired by various international corporations.

Global factors are driving the growth of innovation in food production. Forecasters suggest that there will be a 70% increase in calorific demand by 2050 due to growth in world population2. At the same time, countries are committing to decreasing the output of greenhouse gases, more than 25% of which come from agriculture, forestry, and land-use change2. Additionally, in developed nations there is demand for alternative proteins led by a swing towards plant based vegetarian and vegan diets, with research showing that about 30% of UK adults plan to eat more meat-free products in 2021 than in 20203.