A £20M facility making underwater cables for the world’s largest windfarm will officially open next month, creating about 80 jobs.
It comes a year after JDR Cables Ltd announced it was developing an umbilical cable manufacturing facility in the deep-water berth at Hartlepool Dock.
The site is understood to be the only one in the UK specifically designed to manufacture subsea cables of up to 2,200 tonnes for the offshore wind, oil and gas sectors.
Among the projects the new facility will serve is the Greater Gabbard project, 16 miles off the Suffolk coast and currently the world’s largest wind farm.
The company signed a 15-year lease with site owner PD Ports in July last year. An existing warehouse has been converted to house the 100,000sq ft facility, where 80 staff will be employed.
JDR has invested £20m into the facility and has received a grant from regional development agency One North East.
The agency’s director of Business of Industry Ian Williams said: “I am pleased that One North East was able to support JDR Cables’ creation of an industrial base in the Tees Valley with a Grant for Business Investment offer of £850,000.
“The subsea sector continues to perform well. JDR Cables’ new facility further cements the region’s excellent reputation in the oil and gas sector and is an important milestone in our efforts to create a thriving renewables industry in the North-East.”
JDR selected the PD Ports site in Hartlepool because of its proximity to a deep-water quay.
This will allow cables to be spooled directly from the manufacturing facility to cable laying vessels moored on the nearby deep water quay, as well as installation reels up to 9.2m in diameter.
JDR currently operates from Littleport, in Cambridgeshire, and Houston, in the US, with facilities in the Netherlands, Norway, Thailand and a sales support function in Aberdeen. Although the companies that became JDR Cable Systems have more than 75 years of experience, the company in its present form was established 11 years ago.
It was a combination of Jacques Cable Systems, of Britain, and De Regt Special Cable, of the Netherlands.
The company has grown threefold in the past five years and was featured in the Sunday Times Buyout Track 100 of the UK’s top private- equity owned businesses JDR supplies some of the world’s largest oil and gas and energy providers, including, BP, Shell, Chevron, Scottish and Southern Energy, ARAMCO and Statoil.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here