John Swinney breaks ground at ‘nationally significant’ Ardersier site lining up hundreds of jobs

GROUND was broken at the Port of Ardersier yesterday as the first step towards realising potentially hundreds of new jobs as the site becomes a “nationally significant” renewable infrastructure facility.

The project has received £100 million in loans for the work – £50 million each from the Scottish National Investment Bank and the UK Infrastructure Bank, with new First Minister John Swinney making the journey north for the project’s launch.

Site owners Haventus will now “move at pace” to fully open in the second half of next year when it is hoped it can secure contracts from interested investors wishing to build manufacturing facilities.

It is the largest investment of its kind in the region by either bank and makes Ardersier one of the best funded industrial projects in the UK with the loans common on top of £300 million already pledged by Haventus through Quantum Capital.

The ultimate aim is “to support industrial-scale deployment of fixed and floating offshore wind” that will immediately pave the way for 500 construction jobs by the middle of the summer and potentially thousands more down the line in fabrication.

The companies interested are likely to be targeting the ScotWind and and the Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas (INTOG) sites, which seeks to use floating wind to electrify oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea.

The sums involved dwarf the seed capital of £52 million to be shared by Scotland’s national two Green Freeports. Ardersier is already part of the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport.

Once operational, the facility will significantly increase the offshore wind port capacity, to support the transition to net zero that will be key to the political fortunes of the new First Minister John Swinney.

He said: “This particular development at Ardersier is literally a phenomenal investment in the future of the Highlands and in the realisation of the renewable energy opportunities for Scotland.

“This site will provide us with world-leading facilities to develop the offshore wind sector to anchor our developments and new renewable energy, and that will bring significant wealth and opportunity to the Highlands and it is a very welcome investment.

“So I’m sending out a message here at Ardersier that Scotland is open for investment. This project is an example of Scotland being open for investment and it’s something that is of enormous pride and opportunity for our country.”

“But secondly, we’ve been incredibly well supported by the regulatory authorities like Nature Scotland, and Marine Scotland and Highland Council. They have gone out of their way to help us.

“The ground is broken, there will be significant increase in manpower on the site in the coming weeks. That will peak somewhere around 500 construction workers in the middle of the year. We’ll maintain that level through next year.

“We would expect this facility to be complete and open for business at the back end of next year. I would like to see bids to come in before then as we are already in discussion with all of the project developers in the North Sea for ScotWind and INTOG grounds.

“We are already in discussion with a number of multinational companies who would like to come and build manufacturing facilities here so we would like to get to the point where we’ve actually contracted out a lot of that well in advance of the end of next year, when we’re open.”

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