The APUK PET plant at Wilton International produces PET resin, which is used to make food grade plastic bottles and containers. The facility was originally owned and operated by ICI, sourcing PTA & MEG, its main feedstocks, from the same site. Now, progressively replacing these feedstocks with recycled PET is central to the company’s sustainability strategy. Benefiting from Wilton International’s connectivity and logistics infrastructure As a recent inward investor to Wilton International, Alpek saw the site’s logistics infrastructure and freight connectivity as key benefits.

Wilton International, a 2,000-acre industrial site in Teesside, UK, is home to a well-established cluster of energy-intensive businesses, each benefiting from a unique combination of infrastructure, utilities and services. And with 562 acres of development land currently available, the site is drawing significant interest from prospective new occupants with similar requirements. “At present, we have development plots available in sizes from 2.5 up to 66 acres”, says Matthew Scrimshaw, Commercial Director at Sembcorp Energy UK, the company that manages the site and owns much of the land.

Vulnerable supply chains That’s because the pandemic subjected the UK’s critical supply chains to stress tests that, in many cases, revealed weaknesses. Demand for medical and personal protective equipment (PPE) exceeded supply, exposing the country’s reliance on imports. In the words of the GTMA manufacturers’ trade body: “Amongst the many things we have learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic there is a wider recognition that cheapest purchase price has generated a vulnerability of supply chains with geographic disruption and reduced capacity to uplift production in the UK.

Streamlining the planning and permissions process Arranging the necessary permissions for a new industrial project can be time-consuming – a factor that RCBC does everything possible to minimise. When it comes to planning, the council has two major strings to its bow. One is the support it offers through the planning process itself, as Adrian Miller, who heads up planning at the council, explains. “We provide a free planning pre-application service.

Industry is transforming. The UK’s Industrial Strategy1 highlights major growth opportunities in areas including sustainable transport, carbon reduction, big data, and healthcare solutions for an ageing population. And as new technologies are commercialised, high-growth businesses are seeking suitable locations and sites for their manufacturing operations. High-technology industrial companies have diverse location requirements, but a number of themes recur. Typical needs include development-ready sites with large power supplies, excellent transport and data connectivity, and access to a highly skilled labour force.

SABIC, one of the world’s largest petrochemicals manufacturers, recently upgraded their ‘cracker’ at Wilton International (Olefins 6), to run on ethane imported from the USA. The project took two years to deliver, at a cost of £300 million. The company now runs the most feedstock-flexible cracker in Europe, producing ethylene, propylene and butadiene - essential chemical building blocks for many everyday products. A complex industrial investment project The project was multi-faceted, with input from partners across Teesside and beyond.

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 specialist Martyn Lytollis, of Lambert Smith Hampton. “Industrial companies are struggling to find sites with large power supplies,” Martyn says. “It can take over a year for a supply to be installed and the capital outlay is significant”.

With four on-site power plants as well as national grid backup and over 500 acres of development-ready land, investing companies can build their facility and then just plug and play. Watch this short animated video for an overview of Wilton International’s unique site offer to energy intensive businesses. Energy. Space. Plug & Play. ';" class="embed-container" style="background-image: url('https://res.cloudinary.com/wilton/image/upload/v1580054957/wILTON-VID-THUMB.png');background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:cover;"

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.