Tees Business Tees Business Issue 14 | Page 73

Serving the Teesside Business Community | 73 / REDCAR AND CLEVELAND NEWS SABIC I.T. TEAM IS THE REAL DEAL A Financial Times report listed Middlesbrough at number nine for small cities in Europe on its potential to attract foreign investment. #TalkingUpTeesside S ABIC’s Teesside site is celebrating after winning the Innovation in Technology category at the prestigious Real IT Awards – with the support of three Wilton Centre-based companies. The chemical company’s IT team received the accolade for work carried out on the firm’s System 18 plant at Wilton, near Redcar, the world’s largest Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) plant. Producing LDPE in the form of polymer pellets that are used by customers to manufacture products such as household goods and food packaging, SABIC’s System 18 plant hosts the world’s largest single-stream compressor. SABIC’s Manufacturing IT team on Teesside and data-analysis specialists Argent & Waugh worked with the firm’s machines engineers to develop data inference techniques that could analyse other sensor data and predict the state of each of the compressor’s rings in a way that had previously been impossible. The system has worked reliably, thanks to help from two neighbouring companies – TekGem, who provided key infrastructure support, and Industrial Thinking, who gave expert help with connectivity to the sensor data. The result was a real-time data monitoring, data visualisation and event alerting system built in Argent & Waugh’s web-based platform, Sabisu. The new system has already provided significant savings for SABIC by helping to keep the plant’s operations efficient. SABIC won the Innovation in Technology category at the prestigious Real IT Awards – with the support of three Wilton Centre-based companies. UKSE backs 7,000th business with £100k investment Sirius Minerals exhibition at Kirkleatham A major mining project that will bring thousands of jobs to the region is being outlined at a new exhibition at Kirkleatham Museum. Sirius Minerals’ multi-million pound project involves the construction of two deep mineshafts south of Whitby to access a deposit of a mineral called polyhalite, a key ingredient in fertiliser. The exhibition is due to run until Wednesday July 11. SALTBURN FOOD FESTIVAL The team behind the Saltburn Food Festival have unveiled their plans for the sixth annual celebration of the very best things to eat and drink from both here on our own doorstep and around the world. This year’s event sees an increase from 125 to a record-breaking 150 stalls and is once again expected to attract around 20,000 hungry food-lovers as the popular seaside town is transformed into a bustling festival village for a day. Saltburn Food Festival takes place on Sunday July 29 from 10am to 6pm and admission is free. More details are at saltburnfoodfestival. co.uk. An award-winning high-tech micro engineering company that is continuing to grow its global presence after locating to Teesside is the 7,000th business to secure an investment from UK Steel Enterprise. A £100,000 second investment from UK Steel Enterprise is enabling Micropore Technologies – based in Redcar’s Wilton Centre and which recently won the 2018 NEPIC Award for Innovation – to ‘complete the jigsaw’ of taking its unique membrane emulsification process through from laboratory to full-scale manufacture with the launch of two new systems. CENTRE’S £30K RESTAURANT REFURB The Wilton Centre has invested more than £30,000 in improving its on-site restaurant for more than 750 workers at Teesside’s premier science and business park. Working with catering provider Hutchison, the Wilton Centre management team has expanded the Centre’s popular deli bar in the Lakeside Restaurant and updated food preparation and serving facilities to provide a better service. New digital menus have also been introduced.