EVENTS
Centre stage- PD Ports’ Paul Foreman( left) speaks, seated alongside( from left): Rachel Burke( Tracerco), Grant Glendinning( Etc.) and Jon Booth( AV Dawson).
PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
POSITIVE OUTLOOK
Tees Business LIVE panellists reveal reasons to be cheerful for 2026
Tees Business LIVE: December 4, 2025
BLOOM EATERY & SHOW HALL, MIDDLESBROUGH
Key business figures expressed confidence in Teesside for 2026 – but hoped national and international events don’ t stall progress.
Members of a four-strong panel at the Tees Business LIVE event were asked what gave them confidence for Teesside in 2026 – and what were the biggest threats.
And while all were upbeat about the area’ s prospects, they also pointed out national and global events could play a potentially negative part.
Speaking to a 100-strong audience at Bloom, in Middlesbrough, the panel comprised PD Ports’ chief operating officer Paul Foreman, Education Training Collective CEO Grant Glendinning, Tracerco director of compliance and risk and the reigning Tees Businesswoman of the Year Rachel Burke, and AV Dawson’ s head of sustainability Jon Booth.
Rachel was encouraged by the amount of recent local investment, citing schemes such as co-working space Flok and the impressive Boho X, home of games developer Double Eleven, but felt the biggest threat was a lack of local belief in our own towns.
She said:“ I hear a lot of negativity, specifically about Middlesbrough and Stockton.
“ But it’ s our town – it’ s up to us as business leaders and residents to eat, shop, drink and buy here.
“ It worries me that people are disconnected from their town. That’ s what we’ ve got to really focus on. It’ s our town. We’ ve got to make it work.”
Paul Foreman was encouraged that PD Ports had emerged in good shape after a major divestment process.
He said:“ We’ ve had investors, banks,
8 | Tees Business accountants, lawyers, all sorts of people crawling all over our business for the last nine months or so.
“ That was thankfully completed in the summer and I think from a positivity point of view, we got a huge amount of interest in that process, in the business and the people in the local area.
“ So that, to me, gives a massive boost of confidence in that somebody’ s willing to pay a significant amount of money to buy half the business.
“ And the fact that Brookfield, our current owners since 2009, wanted to keep an investment in the business – they’ ve retained a majority stake.
“ They’ ve stuck around one of the biggest infrastructure businesses in the world, so that gives a lot of confidence that they believe in the business, the area and the UK as a national economy.”
But he felt that for many local firms, the“ flip-flop potential of government policy around the clean energy revolution” could pose a problem.
He said:“ We’ ve seen the implications in America where Mr Trump has come in and changed policies.
“ If government policy shifts and those markets diminish over time, that’ s going to have a significant impact.”
Grant Glendinning cited such developments as Net Zero Teesside and local production of Sustainable Aviation Fuel( SAF) as two reasons for positivity, saying:“ We’ re being viewed as a core production site for SAF nationally, which is really exciting from a skills and investment point of view.
“ But risk-wise, these are frontier industries and very dependent on technology – some of which isn’ t proven, so there are obvious risks there. And they’ re very capital intensive, so they have a long payback.
“ Global economic shifts can lead to some difficulties and that’ s why it’ s so uncertain to predict.
“ But I do think there are some really great, short- and long-term things to be excited about on Teesside.”
Jon Booth said it was good to see new industries and investment coming to the“ Teesside ecosystem”, adding:“ The opportunity on Teesside is absolutely huge.”
But he also felt external factors could affect progress, saying:“ It could partly come down to policy from the government, and certainty around policy and the IMO( International Maritime Organisation) – legislation, for example, and giving port and vessel operators the confidence to invest.
“ It’ s quite hard to convince the board and support a business case for that kind of thing without a little bit of certainty and something that galvanises demand from the vessel operators, so that’ s probably where I see the biggest challenge for us.”
To round off the debate, when asked if the panel could guarantee one“ win” for Teesside in 2026, answers ranged from Boro getting promoted to investing in young people through schemes like Power of Women and apprenticeships for all school leavers who wanted one.
And to applause, Rachel added:“ Could someone put another road into Teesside Park please?”
The event – the final Tees Business LIVE of 2025 – also heard a keynote address from Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen and details of how the world-famous Turner Prize is coming to Middlesbrough in 2026.