30 | Tees Business
whole of the UK.
“ The landscape of the Tees has changed over the years and we’ ve evolved. We recognised an opportunity. Ten years ago we had very little warehousing here, now there’ s four million square feet of it.
“ That’ s a model we want to continue to develop, because those square feet can create jobs.
“ That side of our business has grown circa 10 % a year for the last seven-and-a-half years. We’ ve been gradually building that platform. Originally it had 50 people working in that area of the business, now it has 200 people.
“ It’ s now one of the top four or five container ports in Britain. It was a deliberate, strategic move and it would be fair to say it’ s paying off.”
Originally from Stoke-on-Trent, David is a proud adopted Teessider. He’ s lived in Stokesley with his wife and son and their two black Labradors since coming here 13 years ago and talks passionately about the area. Having left the University of Sheffield with a degree in operational research, David embarked on his career in the port industry after gaining an industrial work experience placement – this later inspired him to get behind Teesside’ s High Tide Foundation – before spending 10 years working at the UK’ s largest container port in Felixtowe.
He then spent 10 years in Hong Kong, working for Hutchison Port Holdings, the world’ s biggest port operator, in developing the firm’ s global infrastructure, acquiring businesses and developing ports around the globe.
David returned to the UK in 2003, as managing director of Teesport, before taking over as CEO in 2006.
Now in his 10th year at the helm, the 52-year-old smiles:“ When I first became CEO, I was told the average life cycle of a CEO was about three-and-a-half years, so I’ ve had three lives already!
“ I’ ve seen a major shift in this business over the last 10 years, but I also see huge opportunities for Teesside.
“ One of the things that really gets me quite annoyed is when you hear people say there are no jobs on Teesside. That’ s absolute, dare I say, bull ****. There are thousands of jobs.
“ Teesside set its stall out five years ago to generate 25,000 new jobs, but there are 100,000 jobs that need to be replaced over the next 10 years. So there’ s a huge amount of opportunity for young people here.
“ OK, it’ s not the centre of banking or high finance, but it is the centre of industry, engineering excellence and all the services that go with that.
“ What we’ re trying to do with the High Tide Foundation is to take that ethos and present it to the young people of Teesside and open their minds to the opportunities that are here and what they need to do at school and college to make the most of it.
“ A lot of these jobs are well paid. We have people who’ ve worked for us at PD Ports for 20-30 years and had a really great life out of it, enjoyed it and reaped the rewards.”
The collapse of SSI just over a year ago
Around 4,600 vessels pass through Teesport every year, carrying 460,000 containers weighing a total of 36 million tonnes.
undoubtedly had a profound impact on PD Ports, but David insists his firm, and Teesside generally, is recovering.
“ Our business is right at the heart of what happens on Teesside,” he said.“ This time last year we had to do a huge amount of work in terms of restructuring our business and implementing cost-savings.
“ But we’ re in a long-term game. We’ ll not be around for 10, 15 or 20 years... we’ ll be around for 50 to 100 years, so we had to take a broader, long-term view.
“ There were sadly a lot of sub-contractors who had to go off site and back into the market place, but in terms of our direct employment we only made 13 people redundant. When you look at the scale of what happened, and the impact it had on our business, we think that was a good result.
“ We’ re now seeing growth in some sectors of our business. The energy plant is a major part of our repositioning transformation and redevelopment of not just Teesport, but the whole Teesside area.”
David’ s future vision is for Teesport to become an energy hub for the whole of the UK.
The construction of MGT Power, a £ 650m biomas power station, has already started, supporting 600 jobs in its construction and around 150 when fully operational in about three years.
And just around the corner, as we sail back down the river towards Tees Dock, we see one huge vessel, owned by Stokesley-based MPI Offshore, which lays offshore wind turbines in the North Sea. A bit further and we stop by to admire another impressive vessel, owned by Darlington offshore engineering firm Deep Ocean, which ploughs
sea-bed trenches and lays cables around the world.
When considering Teesside’ s future, David is enthusiastic.
“ With the combination of waste-to-energy plants being developed, we’ re starting to get into position nationally as well as locally as a major energy hub,” he said.
“ MGT Power will be the first new-build biomas power station in the UK. In terms of permanent long-term jobs it’ s not massive, but it’ s more about the huge investment in the infrastructure of Teesside which will complement the longer-term ambitions to develop the industrial platform around the chemical, processing and manufacturing sectors.
“ If you’ ve got embedded power already here, and logically it could take a number of years, factories will come here for the cheap power, and we can create a powerhouse industrial zone providing all sorts of services in marine, manufacturing, processing and logistics services for the whole of the North of England.”
Although he makes it sound straight forward, David admits it’ s a long old haul, but the fundamentals are in place for Teesside to achieve.
“ We’ re in a competitive market place for capital. But with the right focus and mentality this place can be very successful,” he insists.
“ The skill base here is excellent, the people are fantastic, the work ethic is very good and they’ re very flexible. Our skills have changed dramatically over the last 10 years