Nissan comes bearing gifts
Nissan is the gift that keeps on giving for the Wear economy and the wider North East region with the latest news of a £ 1bn investment in electric cars .
Graeme Anderson looks at the company ’ s commitment to green energy and a longterm future on Wearside .
PM Boris Johnson tours the Nissan plant .
Regions that enjoy the benefits of major global companies on their doorsteps always know they ’ re dancing over a two-edged sword .
On the one hand , those employers bring a huge number of jobs , both their own and the associated supply chain , and prosperity to workers in their thousands .
On the other hand , if anything should ever happen to those big employers …
There ’ s a reason a collective chill went down the backs of Wearsiders whenever scaremongering stories spread that the Japanese car giants might up shop and leave in the wake of the Brexit vote .
You don ’ t have to look too far , ( try Consett and its doomed steelworks ), to see how the closure of an industry can rip the heart out of a functioning community .
There are dozens of these historic tales of woe across the North-East in the wake of shipbuilding , steel and coal ’ s 20th-century collapse .
But unlike those traditional industries , the car industry has resilience built-in , the Washington plant has a super-efficient workforce second to none and the government is prepared to offer financial support when it is needed .
So it was that having been a major employer on Wearside for decades , Nissan doubled down this summer , announcing the UK ’ s first electric battery gigafactory would be built here , bringing thousands of more jobs to the region .
Embracing the green revolution in a £ 1bn move , Nissan will develop the factory in partnership with Chinese manufacturer Envision creating 1,650 new jobs – 900 at Nissan , 750 at Envision .
Once the impact on the overall supply chain is taken into account , though , a total of 6,250 new jobs are expected to be created by a move that will put the North-East at the forefront of the global drive to switch to electric vehicles .
Envision already produces lithium-ion batteries for Nissan ’ s Leaf electric car and has a current capacity of 1.7-gigawatt-hours ( GWh ) annually .
The new plant will expand capacity to 9GWh – enough to power up to 100,000 vehicles a year .
Nissan ’ s chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta revealed there would be three interconnected initiatives bringing together electric vehicles , renewable energy and battery production .
The move was announced on the 35th anniversary of the giant plant ’ s creation in Washington and Mr Gupta said : “ This
is a £ 1bn birthday present for all of my colleagues - a landmark for Nissan , our partners , the UK and the automotive industry as a whole .”
As well as the Japanese and Chinese companies investing hugely , the UK government is also believed to have put more than £ 100m towards a project which it sees as key to the future of the country ’ s car industry .
Just as the birth of Nissan at Washington in the 1980s , ( when Charles Slater was head of Sunderland Council and looked beyond political differences with Margaret Thatcher ’ s Government ), behind the successful announcement of the £ 1bn investment was a fusion of private businesses and public sector goodwill .
The massive development will see a renewable energy ‘ microgrid ’ installed in Washington to provide 100 per cent clean energy at the factory and there are also plans to reuse car batteries for energy .
The new gigafactory is scheduled to open in 2024 and the suggestion is that although 9GWh is the target , the battery factory could be scaled up further in the years ahead as the country continues to target carbon-neutral goals .
Nissan will literally power the Wear region ’ s economy into the future .
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