Serving the Teesside Business Community | 39
WILTON
WONDER
Come behind the scenes at Wilton
International, once the workplace of
thousands of ICI’s Teesside employees,
and now home to some of the world’s
most advanced processing plants.
Meet Wilton’s big operators
SABIC – the Saudi chemicals giant owns
the iconic Cracker, which makes Olefins
including ethylene and propylene, the
building block chemicals that go into
a wide variety of everyday products.
SABIC is close to completing a multimillion pounds upgrade of the Cracker
that will make it globally competitive.
Their £250 million LDPE (lower density
polyethylene) plant produces plastic beads
that go into everything from plastic bags to
supermarket packaging.
The Merseyside Energy Recovery
facility turns waste into power.
T
ees Business joined nearly 100
Teessiders on a rare behind-thescenes tour of the massive Wilton
International site, near Redcar.
The visit was organised by global
chemical giants SABIC as part of the annual
series of Discover Middlesbrough events,
with SABIC’s Teesside site director John
Bruijnooge and Sembcorp’s Terry Waldron
acting as tour guides.
The site is home to giant processing plants
owned by six major blue chip companies –
and the Wilton International site lives up its
name, with the assets owned by firms based
in Saudi Arabia, the Korean Republic, USA,
Singapore, Germany and France.
Starting and ending at the Wilton Centre,
a whistle-stop coach tour of the site took
us to view the major assets of SABIC, Lotte
Chemical UK, Huntsman Polyurethanes,
Sembcorp Utilities, Merseyside Energy
Recovery and Ensus.
Between them they employ around 1,500
Teesside people and engage hundreds of
others as permanent contractors or supply
chain partners.
The Wilton International site covers 2,000
acres. In layman’s terms, that’s the size of
1,300 football pitches. It features 20 miles of
internal roadway, with nine miles of security
fencing running around its perimeter.
Tour guide Waldron said: “The truly
international assets on the Wilton site are
major players in the global petrochemical,
chemical, renewable energy and biofuels
markets.
“We’ve had difficult times over the years,
especially around 2009 when several of the
“Just as the companies
have, the Wilton site has
evolved too. We continue
to attract new and exciting
projects to the site.”
– Terry Waldron, Sembcorp
site’s plants closed due to a variety of factors
including the global economic downturn.
Plants owned by Invista, Dow and Croda all
closed.
“The companies operating here now are
working in really tough European and global
markets.
“The businesses here have evolved and
adapted. Decision-makers around the world
see this area as somewhere worth investing
in.
“Just as the companies have, the Wilton
site has evolved too. We continue to attract
new and exciting projects to the site.
“The fact is that we’re a huge success
story. Recent years have seen significant
investments by firms operating in high
value, low carbon environments including
green energy, biofuels and plastics recycling
operations.
“With shared access to low-cost power,
steam and other utilities, and an integrated
site infrastructure, we continue to offer major
advantages to energy-intensive businesses.
There are plenty of challenges, of course, but
there’s every reason to believe the future is
bright.”
Lotte Chemical UK – part of the
Korean-owned Lotte Group, the firm’s
Melinar 5 and LC1 plants make polyester
intermediates. Customers extrude the
product to make it into plastic bottles.
Huntsman Polyurethanes – The USowned plant makes polyurethane-based
materials. Polyurethanes have a range of
uses and go into everything from house
insulation to the soles of training shoes
and paint.
Sembcorp Utilities UK – the Singaporean
firm has transformed energy made at
Wilton from being primarily based on fossil
fuels such as coal, oil and gas to now
being mainly based on biomass, a more
sustainable fuel. The £65 million Biomass
Power Station (also known as Wilton 10)
uses wood from a variety of sustainable
sources to make power (electricity) and
heat (steam) for use on site.
Merseyside Energy Recovery – this
waste-to-energy facility will utilise
around 440,000 tonnes of waste from
municipal authorities on Merseyside as
a fuel to make enough power for 63,000
households – and steam for site purposes.
Ensus – a biofuels firm owned by the
German company CropEnergies, their plant
utilises sustainable sources of animal feedgrade wheat (bought from farmers in the
region) to create a greener fuel. The plant
has the capability of making around a third
of the UK’s current green fuel needs.