Highland Green Freeport in race to secure ‘generational’ employment after amassing £890m of investment
Calum MacPherson, Chief Executive, Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport.
The Highland Green Freeport[1] is racing to secure generational employment after amassing GBP890 million of investment. And Calum Macpherson, the chief executive of the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport[2], was under no doubt that it is a "race." In an exclusive interview, he told is that "it won't be boom and bust is if we get this right, this could be work for generations to come."
The immediate starting point for the interview was the formal confirmation by the Scottish and UK governments that the full business case had been approved. That will release GBP25 million of seed funding to the freeport from the Treasury[3], news that emerged alongside the UK government's spending review last month. As the CEO of the Green Freeport no one is better placed to offer an overview and an insight about what that means for the Highlands.
For Mr Macpherson the enormous task of competing internationally boils down to something quite simple: do not miss the opportunity.
"Instead of this being a boom," he said. "For example, as has happened either in the construction of the hydro schemes or oil and gas, a 20-year boom - this should take 50 to 100 years just to build out. "So, we have an opportunity and this is why there's been so much energy and focus and why, for example, the Sumitomo tool cable factory was such a great result.[4] "It is not just about this part of the world where you take the components, put the jigsaw together, and float them off - it is about where we make the components, the manufacturing jobs.
"So Sumitomo is the first of, I hope, a number of manufacturers - I mean you don't spend GBP350 million on a factory with a view to running it for 10 years, you do that with it being in place for some generations to come.
"For us, the real prize, and the reason why I hope this time and why we believe this time it won't be boom and bust is if we get this right, this could be work for generations to come. "Maybe look at it in the counter-factual, can you imagine our great-grandchildren sitting in a hostelry in Inverness, enjoying a pint and saying can you believe that we had this massive boom in the North Sea and there are now thousands of offshore wind turbines and all these components and we let all that pass? That it has all been made in Finland and in Denmark and in Norway and in Germany and in the Middle East?
And here we are sitting closest to it, but we didn't take the opportunity?" It is a salutary thought but given the proximity to the North Sea, no other enterprise is in a better geographical position to benefit from surge towards renewables but that does mean it will be easy. "So there has been a huge push in this because this is a competition," he said.
"There's no question if our ports and harbours in the Highlands - and I'm going all the way from Stornoway to Kishorn, right the way around to Wick for doing the operations and maintenance - if we don't put the right foot forward and secure this then I assure you ports in Norway and Finland and Sweden and all around Europe will. "We know that there is active promotion at the moment to try and take some of the contracts that might be coming our way elsewhere. So we can't sit back and let that happen, which is why the ports and the businesses and indeed the public sector are so keen to get behind this.
"And why, to this date, there are a number of ports and locations around the UK and in Scotland that really wish they'd secured the freeport status not necessarily seen it come to the Highlands and Islands."
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References
- ^ Highland Green Freeport (www.inverness-courier.co.uk)
- ^ Calum Macpherson, the chief executive of the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport (www.inverness-courier.co.uk)
- ^ release GBP25 million of seed funding to the freeport from the Treasury (www.inverness-courier.co.uk)
- ^ for example, the Sumitomo tool cable factory was such a great result. (www.inverness-courier.co.uk)
- ^ here (www.inverness-courier.co.uk)