January 2005

News

Pre-Budget Report announces measures to help boost business
Chancellor Gordon Brown delivered his annual Pre-Budget Report on 2 December. Mr Brown’s estimates for economic growth remained unchanged at 3.25 per cent for 2004 and 2-3.5 per cent for 2005, while he predicted that British business investment would rise by 5.75 per cent in 2004 and by 4.5 per cent this year. Public sector borrowing for the year to April will be $66.5 billion, less than the $71.3 billion forecast, although borrowing for subsequent years will be higher than previously estimated. The budget deficit for 2004/05 is forecast to be $24.7 billion and $13.3 billion in 2005/06, but in 2006/07 this is predicted to turn into a surplus of $1.9 billion, growing to a surplus of $22.8 billion by 2009/10. The inflation rate is expected to be 1.75 per cent in 2005 and 2 per cent in subsequent years, despite higher world prices for oil and metals.

Among new measures introduced by the Chancellor are the removal of tax barriers to the formation of university spin-off companies and a re-examination of R&D tax credits for medium-sized science companies. A new Science Forum, headed by Sir Tom McKillop, chief executive of AstraZeneca, will be set up to benchmark efforts to increase levels of industrial R&D. The forum, which will report back to the government in March, is part of a package of measures aimed at boosting the UK’s competitiveness in science and technology.

In the trade arena, a new Asia Task Force is to be established to develop trade links with Asia, in particular countries such as India and China, which currently each account for 1 per cent of UK exports. The government pledged to work more closely with other European states to reduce the burden on business of regulatory red tape originating in Brussels. A fund of $38 million will be provided to accelerate the development of energy-efficient technology, providing a focus for investment and helping to build new partnerships between businesses, researchers and policy-makers.

Tax relief will be introduced for the renovation of commercial property in 2,000 enterprise areas around the UK, and there will be deregulation of ‘business angels’ to reduce barriers to investment. A small business unit will be created within the Inland Revenue, designed to cut administration costs for SMEs and to improve compliance. The Chancellor has launched a consultation exercise on the scope for a single tax return that would encompass all the taxes paid by small businesses, and business inspection and enforcement regimes will be rationalised and streamlined.

There will be a crackdown on tax-avoidance schemes employed by financial institutions and other large companies, particularly City firms that have been using specially constructed companies to pay bonuses to their employees, while avoiding tax and National Insurance contributions. It is estimated that the tighter tax rules could net an additional $6.7 billion in revenues by 2008.

There will be major improvements in the area of childcare, with a ten-year strategy that will see paid maternity leave increase from six months to nine months in 2007, with an eventual goal of 12 months. Fathers will have the right to take more than the two weeks of paid leave currently available, by using up some of the entitlement previously reserved for mothers. There will be an increase in tax credits and the hours of free nursery care offered to working parents, while lone parents will be offered a bonus of $76 a week in their first year of returning to work. There will also be an expansion of the credits system to encourage people on incapacity benefit to return to work.


Fresh funding for high-tech R&D
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has made $152 million available to British business to aid research and development in the latest innovative technologies and to commercialise lab-based discoveries. The announcement forms part of the government’s recently published five-year programme ‘Creating Wealth from Knowledge’, under which the DTI has refocused its industrial policy to act as a champion for science, innovation and technology. The money will be available to companies carrying out collaborative R&D in nine priority areas: design, simulation and modelling; micro- and nanotechnology; pervasive computing; waste management and minimisation; smart materials; bio-based industrial products; energy technologies; imaging technologies; and opto-electronic and disruptive electronic technologies. The deadline for outline applications is 7 February.

Another funding package of $57 million – provided by the DTI, the RDAs and industry – has enabled the setting up of the National Composites Network, which will support the production of light materials for use in industries in the automotive, aerospace and healthcare sectors. The network will be based on regional centres that specialise in particular areas of composites technology. These will bring together experts in composites; share knowledge in composites across different industries and between companies; and help smaller companies to access the latest technology and R&D. Wales will play a key role in the network, hosting the UK’s only validation centre for testing new non-destructive technologies for composite materials. This will be based at the Welsh Development Agency’s Engineering Centre for Manufacturing and Materials in Port Talbot.

Across UK business, $26 billion was spent on R&D in 2003, an increase of 4 per cent from 2002. Civil expenditure increased by 2 per cent to $22.2 billion, while defence expenditure grew by 18 per cent to $3.6 billion. The product group with the largest R&D expenditure was pharmaceuticals, which accounted for 24 per cent of the total. It was followed by aerospace, which accounted for 12 per cent of all spending, and computer and related activities, which accounted for 10 per cent.

Newcastle in North East England, Manchester in the North West and York in Yorkshire and Humber have been awarded ‘science city’ status, and will share a $190 million fund set aside by the three northern Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) over a six-year period to further the development of science activities. RDA One NorthEast will work with Newcastle City Council, the NHS, Newcastle University and the Centre for Life (a world leader in stem cell research) to advance work in areas such as life sciences and nanotechnology and to establish new R&D facilities in the city.

In the mainstream motor market, car production in the three months to October 2004 fell by 4.2 per cent, seasonally adjusted, compared with the previous three months. Production for the home market decreased by 15.6 per cent while production for the export market declined by 1.1 per cent. Compared with the same period a year earlier, total production was 5.1 per cent lower – a fall of 16 per cent for the domestic market and 0.3 per cent for exports. The production of commercial vehicles, however, rose by 10.2 per cent compared with the previous three months and by 19.9 per cent compared with a year earlier. Without seasonal adjustment, commercial vehicle production for the period was 21.4 per cent higher than in 2003, with a rise of 1.5 per cent in output for the home market and 38.2 per cent for the export market.

Manufacturing is boosted by strong pound
Manufacturing activity grew at its fastest pace for four months in November, according to the Cips/Reuters purchasing managers’ index. An unexpected rush of new orders, from domestic customers and from Europe and southeast Asia, saw the index rise to 55 in November, up from 53.5 in October. This was the 17th month in succession in which the index had stayed above 50, the point that separates contraction from expansion. Exporters have been helped by the strength of the pound against the dollar, which hit a 12-year high of £1 to $1.93 in late November. This has cushioned them from the effects of large price increases in basic commodities such as oil, which are denominated in dollars. At the same time, sterling’s relative weakness against the euro has made British goods more attractive to consumers in Europe.

The Manufacturing Advisory Service calculates that it has helped British industry add value to the tune of $163 million since it was set up three years ago – or $163,000 a day. The government-backed MAS was set up to provide practical advice to manufacturing companies in England and Wales to help them improve their productivity and competitiveness. Operating through ten regional centres, in its first three years it has responded to over 40,000 enquiries from firms seeking advice, has visited more than 8,800 companies to carry out an initial diagnostic ‘health check’, and has gone on to complete 2,200 in-depth consultancies. Over the next five years, it predicts it will assist a further 20,000 manufacturing companies.

Leeds in Yorkshire and Humber could become the largest financial services centre outside London by 2020, according to a new report from RDA Yorkshire Forward and the Leeds Financial Services Initiative (LFSI). The city’s financial services sector is continuing to expand steadily, though more cooperation is required between the public and private sectors if this goal is to be attained, concludes the report. The sector currently employs 42,000 people in the city itself and 80,000 in the region as a whole. Employment in financial and related services grew by 22 per cent between 1995/97 and 2000/02.

Environmental package aims to reduce business waste
Along with the $38 million announced in the Pre-Budget Report for the development of energy-efficient technologies, the government has introduced a $540 million scheme, spread over five years, to help businesses generate less waste and to dispose of waste more efficiently. The money will come from the landfill tax levied on business waste, which is designed to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill sites. The Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) programme will deliver the 2005 tranche of funding, worth $82 million, from April.

Funds will be allocated to projects such as Envirowise, which advises businesses on how to reduce their environmental impact, and to the DTI’s technology fund, which supports R&D on waste technologies. The Environment Agency will receive $3.8 million to tackle flytipping, while other beneficiaries will include the Carbon Trust, which helps businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which recycles waste from small businesses; and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), which aims to bring businesses together so that the waste from one can be used as an input for another.

In a separate development, Citiraya Recycling Technology, part of the Citiraya Group of Singapore, has announced plans to open a $1.8 million recycling plant at Hirwaun in Wales. The 35,000 sq ft plant will allow manufacturers of TV sets and computer monitors to comply with strict new European Union directives on recycling. It will use laser cutting technology to safely separate and recycle elements in cathode tubes for re-use – one of the first facilities in the UK to do so. The plant, the first of a series Citiraya plans to establish across Europe, will be capable of handling 500,000 cathode ray tubes a year, about 5 per cent of the annual total of redundant tubes in the UK.

Renewable energy initiatives gather pace
Construction of wind farms reached record levels in 2004, but the development of offshore schemes must be stepped up if the government is to attain its climate change targets, according to Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt. The British Wind Energy Association estimates that 253MW of new wind power capacity came online last year, double the figure in 2003 and five times the average annual capacity built in the 1990s.

Scroby Sands wind farm, off the Norfolk coast

Wind farm developers plan to invest more than $13 billion in construction by 2010, by which time the UK aims to be generating 10 per cent of its energy from renewable resources. Wind power will represent three-quarters of this total, but 8,000MW of capacity – enough to power 6 million homes – needs to be built if the target is to be met. This will require 3,000 more turbines to be built in the countryside and along the coast, compared with the 1,000 currently operating. Another 18 developments, providing 617MW of power, are likely to be completed this year, and planning permission has been granted for 68 further schemes with a capacity of 2,000MW, half of it offshore.

One wind farm developer, Spanish renewable energy company Gamesa, has created a wholly-owned UK subsidiary and opened an office in Newport in South Wales. The creation of Gamesa Energy UK is due to increasing backing for renewable energy in the UK, says the company. It currently has 400MW of power capacity in negotiation with landowners, for a number of projects across Wales.

In other initiatives, a new government-appointed task force has been set up to boost the production of biomass – trees and plants used as an environment-friendly energy source. The $6.7 million Bio-Energy Infrastructure Scheme, headed by Sir Ben Gill, the former president of the National Farmers’ Union, will offer grants to help harvest, store, process and supply biomass for energy production. Crops commonly used as biomass include willow, miscanthus (a tall, woody grass) and wood fuel from forests.

Work is under way in Teesside in North East England on the world’s largest complex for the production of biofuels. The Biofuels Corporation project at Seal Sands will be capable of producing 250,000 tonnes of fuel a year when it goes into operation, serving markets in the UK and Europe. Feedstock for the plant will include imported vegetable oil and rapeseed oil produced in the UK, from which it will produce fuel that can be mixed with ultra-low-sulphur diesel for use in standard and commercial vehicles.

Europe’s largest vertical array of solar panels is to be installed on a building in Manchester in North West England. Three sides of the landmark CIS service tower, the tallest building in the city, will be clad with a 400ft array of photovoltaic panels, which will create up to 180,000 units of renewable electricity a year. The $10.5 million project, the largest ever solar installation in the UK, should be complete by the end of the year.

The City of London is well placed to become a world centre for the emerging carbon market, according to Environment Minister Elliott Morley. Speaking at the launch of the London Climate Change Service Providers Group (LCCSPG) – the first climate change group specifically for service providers – he said London had been given a head start by the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, which began in 2002. The 70 members of the LCCSPG will help international firms adjust to Kyoto Protocol regulations and to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which came into effect at the beginning of 2005. The group will provide expertise across the fields of carbon management, financial services, monitoring, verification and validation, legal services, trading emissions allowances and brokering.


Internet sales more than double in value
The value to UK businesses of sales made via the internet more than doubled in 2003 to reach $75 billion, up from $35.5 billion in 2002, according to an annual e-commerce survey by the Office for National Statistics. Big increases were recorded in the value of trade carried out over all kinds of information and communication technologies and across all sectors of the economy. Internet purchases rose by 113 per cent, and as a proportion of all ICT sales rose from 10 per cent in 2002 to 17 per cent in 2003. The value of internet sales to households rose from $12.2 billion to $21.7 billion, with around 78 of all purchases being of physical products.

The government has commissioned a review of its available radio spectrum resources, with the aim of unlocking an ‘invisible’ asset that could raise substantial sums for the Treasury. The government, the single biggest user of UK radio spectrum, has already committed to allowing existing spectrum owners to sell off unused frequencies. A few years ago, the government raised $42.8 billion from the sale of frequencies to 3G mobile phone operators, although since then liberalisation of spectrum trading has met with only limited success, and a new sale of unwanted or repurposed frequencies is unlikely to raise as much as this. Professor Martin Cave of Warwick Business School has been appointed to head the review.

Manchester is to become the UK’s largest broadcasting centre outside London, after the BBC announced plans to move 1,800 jobs out of London to the North West. An estimated further 2,000 jobs in media and related industries will be created in a knock-on effect across the North of England and, in all, some $1.4 billion of economic activity will be generated. The BBC will relocate a significant proportion of its London base to Manchester, including CBBC, BBC Sport, Radio Five Live, New Media and Research and Development. “We want to build a great new broadcasting hub populated with some of the strongest parts of the BBC, the parts which we know will be strong 20, 30 years from now,” said the Corporation’s Director General, Mark Thompson.

Improvements on the way for road and rail networks
The Highways Agency has confirmed it will undertake a $1.9 billion programme of improvements to strategic national roads over the next three years, in addition to a $1.7 billion programme of schemes for strategic regional roads. The agency already has 14 major improvement schemes under way on the strategic road network and plans to start a further 33 by April 2008, as well as developing proposals for new schemes. National-level projects already under construction include widening of the M60 between junctions 5 and 8, widening of the M25 between junctions 12 and 15 and improvements to the A1(M). Schemes planned to start between now and April 2008 include alterations to the M4 at J18, improvements to the Handy Cross junction on the M40/A404 and widening of the M1 from J6A to J10. A new management scheme, involving traffic officers to clear congestion after major incidents, has already been introduced. In all, the Highways Agency plans to invest a total of $3.6 billion in the road network over the next three years.

A new Railways Bill has set out a framework for improving performance on the UK’s rail network. The bill, which follows a government White Paper and the abolition of the Strategic Rail Authority, gives the Secretary of State for Transport responsibility for setting the strategic direction for rail and charges the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) with overseeing safety and costs. It will devolve decision-making power to local government – the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, London and the regions – and will give rail users a greater say in how the network is run. A new Rail Group of around 250-280 civil servants will be set up within the Department for Transport (DfT) to help monitor performance, channel investment and award franchises.

The Department for Transport has published the 2004 edition of Regional Transport Statistics, a publication compiled by government agency National Statistics that brings together a wide range of transport data, including figures on road traffic, public transport and freight. It is available free of charge from the DfT: phone +44-(0)20-7944 3096, e-mail subnational.stats@dft.gsi.gov.uk or download it from the DfT website at www.dft.gov.uk. Also available is the 30th edition of Transport Statistics Great Britain, which provides a comprehensive overview of transport patronage in the UK.

Expansion plans for UK’s leading ports
The DfT has also published Waterborne Freight in the United Kingdom 2003, which contains statistics on inland waterways and freight carried around the UK coast. The report shows that in 2003, 47.4 million tonnes of cargo were carried on inland waterways, a figure that has declined by 20 per cent over the past decade. In 2003, goods lifted on inland waterways fell by 3 per cent compared with 2002, while goods moved fell by 5 per cent to 1.6 billion tonne-kilometres, largely due to a decline in liquid and dry bulks traffic. The busiest inland waterway was the River Thames, which accounted for 18.1 million tonnes of goods lifted and 0.71 billion tonne-kilometres moved.

Maritime Statistics 2003, meanwhile, shows that freight traffic at UK ports fell by half of 1 per cent in 2003, compared with the previous year, to 556 million tonnes (Mt). Inwards traffic rose by 1 per cent to 324 Mt while outwards traffic fell by 6 Mt to 232 Mt. Bulk traffic fell by 1 per cent in terms of tonnage, but container and ro-ro traffic increased by 1 Mt, or 1 per cent. The leading ports by tonnage were Grimsby & Immingham (55.9 Mt), Tees & Hartlepool (53.8 Mt), London (51 Mt), Forth (38.8 Mt) and Southampton (35.8 Mt). Dover maintained its position as the leading ro-ro port, though its 1.8 million movements of road goods vehicles and unaccompanied trailers was 4 per cent down on the previous year. Felixstowe, the leading container port, handled 1.6 million containers, 8 per cent fewer than in 2002.

Associated British Ports, which owns and operates the port of Immingham (in Yorkshire and Humber) has announced plans to invest $84.6 million to expand its coal terminal at the Humber International Terminal, part of the port complex. The terminal, which mostly tranships coal for energy suppliers, handled its 20 millionth tonne of cargo in June 2004, just four years after going into operation. The expansion comes after ABP secured agreements with BHP Billiton, Drax Power and EDF Energy to use the facility. The second phase of the terminal will be capable of handling 7.5 million tonnes of coal a year, and will start receiving shipments in mid-2006. ABP is also building a new $52.2 million ro-ro ferry terminal at Immingham, under a 25-year agreement with the port’s largest customer, Danish shipping line DFDS Tor Line.

Rail freight services to Felixstowe in Eastern England are to increase with the completion of work to allow the passage of the largest shipping containers along key rail routes. Leading rail freight operators Freightliner, EWS and GB Railfreight all plan to increase their services to the Suffolk port, after track-lowering work was carried out to allow 9ft 6in-high containers to be carried on normal rail wagons under low bridges and through narrow tunnels. The larger containers, which now make up almost half those used in international shipping, have gradually taken over from the older 8ft 6in boxes. They can now be carried from Felixstowe to London and northwards on the main west coast rail line, which runs from London to Glasgow.


Regional airports unveil new European routes
Ryanair, the low-fares Irish airline, has established its 12th UK base at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport in North West England. The airline will invest $240 million in four new Boeing 737-800 series aircraft and will operate nine new European routes, to Barcelona, Cork, Limoges, Pisa, Murcia, Shannon, Granada, Nimes and Venice. A new northern-based low-cost airline, Jet2.com, will serve nine European destinations from Manchester Airport, using six dedicated Boeing 737s. The carrier, which already serves 14 destinations from Leeds Bradford airport and three from Belfast, will initially fly to Budapest, Faro, Geneva, Malaga, Murcia, Nice, Pisa, Valencia and Venice.

Also at Manchester, GB Airways, the British Airways franchise carrier, is to open a new base, operating flights to Spain, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Cyprus and Malta. Zoom Airlines has announced three new low-cost services from Manchester to destinations in Canada. Flights will begin in May 2005 to Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver. Manchester Airport was recently named ‘Best UK Airport’ at the British Travel Awards, which saw 75,000 UK travel agents vote across a range of categories. In 2004 Manchester, which is the UK’s largest regional airport outside London, handled more than 21 million passengers.

Continental Airlines has announced the first ever direct air route between New York and Belfast in Northern Ireland. The new route, which links Belfast International Airport and Newark, will go into operation in June. Meanwhile, Air Wales is to launch two new services, from Cardiff to Norwich and from Norwich to Dublin. Flights will initially operate on three days a week, though this may expand to six days if demand is sufficient. Also in Wales, Airport Concessions, which is jointly owned by Spanish firms Albertis and Aena, is to acquire airport company TBI for just over $1 billion. TBI, based in Cardiff, operates London Luton, Belfast International and Cardiff International airports in the UK, as well as facilities in the US, Sweden and Bolivia.

 

Around the Regions
Air China, the Chinese national carrier, chose to make its overseas stock debut with a joint listing in Hong Kong and London, raising $1.1 billion from the flotation. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been working hard to persuade Chinese companies to seek listings in London rather than in New York, and in November opened an Asia-Pacific office in Hong Kong. The LSE had been engaged with Air China for almost two years before the company listed.

newScale, a service delivery management (SDM) software specialist based in Foster City, California, has opened a European sales office in London. SDM software enables companies to run internal service organisations more efficiently, by automating service ordering, managing service delivery and tracking delivery performance.

Earth Tech, a US-based provider of consulting, engineering and construction services, has opened an office in Richmond, South East England, to support the expansion of its water infrastructure and environmental business in Europe. The company, a business unit of Tyco Engineered Products and Services, based in Long Beach, California, already has five offices in the UK and 130 worldwide.

Synaptris Inc, an enterprise reporting solutions specialist based in San Jose, California, has opened an office in Hitchin, South East England. The company, the software product arm of the Cybernet Software Systems Group, has more than 1,800 customers and 170,000 licensed users for its family of products, across 40 countries. It sells its products directly, as well as through OEM arrangements, resellers, system integrators and value-added resellers.

Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is to invest $139 million in UK firm Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), based in Eastern England. The two companies will work together to develop the next generation of anti-inflammatory drugs, under a programme initially scheduled to last for five years. AstraZeneca will take a 19.9 per cent stake in the loss-making company, which specialises in developing drugs from antibodies.

Austria Antriebstechnik (ATB), an Austrian manufacturer of electrical motors and drive systems, is to acquire Morley Electric Motors, based in Leeds, Yorkshire and Humber, subject to regulatory approval. Morley, founded in 1897, specialises in motors for mining applications and has a workforce of 115. The acquisition is part of a plan for rapid expansion by ATB, which sees Morley’s product range as an ideal addition to its explosion-proof motors range, which is produced in Nordenham in Germany.

The East Midlands Development Agency (emda) has extended its Selective Finance for Investment (SFI) grant scheme to provide support to small and medium-sized businesses in disadvantaged areas of the cities of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, the Peak District and across Lincolnshire. With support from the European Regional Development Fund, emda can now make discretionary grants of between $19,000 and $190,000 to assist projects with fixed capital expenditure, such as land, property, plant and machinery. The agency has also launched a new web site to promote the East Midlands as an investment destination for European businesses. The site – at www.englisheastmidlands.com – provides a comprehensive overview of the region and its investment opportunities.

Coventry in the West Midlands has been named one of the best-equipped cities for growth over the next 10-15 years in terms of its available infrastructure, in a survey of the UK’s 20 largest cities by telecoms operator Cable and Wireless. Along with Southampton in the South East and Aberdeen in Scotland, the city scored highly in terms of education, skills, broadband availability and transport infrastructure. Over the past five years, more than 170 new companies – many of them high-tech – have invested in Coventry, creating over 6,000 new jobs. To help attract more, the city’s inward investment team has produced a new fact pack, detailing everything from the city’s demographics to its leisure facilities. For a copy, e-mail Karen O’Donoghue at: karenodonoghue@coventry.gov.uk.

The Bank of New York, which specialises in securities servicing for issuers, investors and financial intermediaries, has chosen Manchester in North West England as the location for a new ‘growth centre’ for its operations in the UK and Europe. Initially, the bank will take 40,000 sq ft of office space and will create around 350 jobs by the summer of 2006. Tim Keaney, the bank’s executive vice-president and head of Europe, said: “We chose Manchester because it has an excellent transport and business infrastructure and a wide and deep pool of talent.” The Bank of New York already employs around 3,000 people in the UK, with offices in London, Swindon, Liverpool and Edinburgh.

Amcat, a US provider of call centre technology solutions, has moved into a new, 5,000 sq ft purpose-built facility in Manchester. The company, based in Edmund, Oklahoma, will use its new base as its European development centre. Oracle Ireland, a subsidiary of the US enterprise software giant Oracle, is to open an office in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Celanese, a Dallas, Texas-based chemical products and process specialist, plans to acquire Vinamul Polymers, the emulsion polymer business of National Starch and Chemical Company (NSC) for $208 million, subject to regulatory approvals. NSC is a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Vinamul Polymers operates manufacturing plants in Warrington in North West England, as well as in the US, Canada and the Netherlands.

German industrial group Henkel has opened a new national distribution centre at its plant in Winsford, Cheshire in North West England. The company supplies a range of home improvement and stationery brands, including Solvite, Loctite, Sellotape, Nitromors and Copydex. The new 107,000 sq ft centre represents the first phase of a five-year expansion plan for the site, which includes the conversion of an existing warehouse into a new manufacturing unit. It is expected that more than 70 million products will be shipped annually from the centre, of which 85 per cent will be manufactured on-site.

In the same region, Cereal Partners UK (CPUK), one of the UK’s largest cereal manufacturers, is to expand its Wirral site to become a European Centre of Excellence. The $23.6 million first-phase expansion involves the construction of an 80,000 sq ft extension to the company’s factory, with funding support provided by the Northwest Development Agency (NWDA). CPUK is a subsidiary of Cereal Partners World-wide (CPW), which was formed in 1990 as a 50:50 joint venture between Nestlé SA of Switzerland and US food giant General Mills. The UK was the first market the company entered, purchasing famous brands such as Shredded Wheat and Shreddies. CPUK now claims around 25 per cent of the UK breakfast cereals market, which is worth $1.9 billion a year.

Also in the Wirral, Swedish-owned company SAB WABCO has invested $4.8 million to relocate to a new 70,000 sq ft headquarters building at Twelve Quays in Birkenhead, securing 100 jobs. The company, a world leader in the production of braking systems and ancillary equipment for rail vehicles, has had a presence in the Wirral for more than 20 years.

ProPharma Limited, a Glasgow-based company that specialises in the development of pre-clinical pharmaceutical formulations and in the manufacture of sterile clinical trial supplies, has begun operations at a new facility on the West of Scotland Science Park. The five-year-old company was originally spun out of the University of Strathclyde and is now majority-owned by Evotec OAI AG, based in Hamburg, Germany. The investment, which has been supported by a Regional Selective Assistance grant of $1.1 million, has safeguarded 29 jobs and created a further 31.

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