Schneider Electric has opened its major ‘net-zero’ facility for manufacturing electrical equipment in Scarborough with plans for hundreds more jobs.
The £42m facility will be the “backbone of the company’s infrastructure offering in the UK”. The 16,500 square metre site was turned from a vacant field into a state-of-the-art facility in exactly 12 months.
The French multinational, which had an existing nearby site, decided to stay in Scarborough because of the “talent of the teams” and the “really dedicated local workforce”.
Kelly Becker, President at Schneider Electric, UK & Ireland, Belgium & Netherlands, has been with the company for two decades but one attendee at the ceremony has worked at the company for 60 years. “So, 20 years, that’s not a lot, right?” quipped Ms Becker.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, the French Ambassador to the UK, Hélène Tréheux-Duchêne, said that Schneider’s “investment in green energy in Scarborough is a source of pride in our [countries’] bilateral relations”.
However, the ambassador declined an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) due to a busy schedule. David Skaith, the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire, was also not available for an interview as he had an audience with the ambassador.
Ms Becker said that improving local transport links would also be beneficial for employees and the business, adding that while she hadn’t spoken with Mayor Skaith directly about increasing the frequency of trains between York and Scarborough, “any transport links to improve in this area, it would matter to us”.
Asked what the company’s longer-term plans and aims were on the North Yorkshire Coast and at its 16,000 square metre facility, Ms Becker said:
“It’s about growth and being able to utilise this facility and continue to make more products here and evolve as the nature of what we do evolves and the nature of electrification evolves.
“But it’s also to be a great employer, to be a great member of the community, and to create great jobs, which makes people want to work for us. It doesn’t work if I have a big, beautiful facility and I can’t attract people to work here.”
Sarah Jones MP, who until the weekend was the Minister of State for Industry, had been due to attend the event but following a move to the Home Office in the prime minister’s cabinet reshuffle, no ministers attended the event.
Lord Harrington, the chair of Make UK, which represents more than 20,000 manufacturing businesses, said:
“I think we’ve got a great future for advanced manufacturing in this country, for technology, the spin-offs from universities are tremendous.
“If ever I’m feeling miserable in London and in Westminster and in the real estate business and everywhere you speak to people, the area of doom and gloom, you just have to come to places like this.”
Summing up what the company does, Ms Becker said:
“Schneider is everything from the electrical circuits in your home all the way up to every large utility line that you see, Schneider is likely involved in some form or capacity in delivering electricity.
“And in the UK, that looks like data centres, because we build and work in a lot of data centres, life sciences, the utilities are very large customers, the water utilities. And then this facility is really everything related to infrastructure.”
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