Norfolk Chamber recently hosted a roundtable event, in partnership with London Heathrow Airport, involving 16 Norfolk businesses.
The objective of the roundtable was to gather local business representatives together to discuss the opportunities that exist within the Heathrow Airport supply chain and how businesses can be more involved in their future expansion plans.
Heathrow were keen to engage with Norfolk businesses to further understand the business capabilities in our region and hear local views. Discussions centred around the challenges that Norfolk businesses face in joining Heathrow Airport’s supply chain and David Ferroussat, the Infrastructure Procurement Director and Sophie Carter from their Public Affairs Department answered questions about the possible expansion of Heathrow Airport.
Expansion at Heathrow has the potential to create 180,000 jobs and 10,000 apprenticeships. It will allow for 40 additional long haul destinations and more regional connectivity to local airports such as Norwich International Airport.
Should the expansion of Heathrow be agreed next week, the construction period would run from 2020 to 2026. The supply chaincould involve over 8,500 suppliers from large to SME. Heathrow were very keen to identify that there were plenty of opportunities for Norfolk businesses to be included within the supply chain. Any business that wants to be involved canregister on Heathrow’s procurement website – click here for details.
In addition, Heathrow are holding a business summit on Tuesday 08 November and invited businesses to register their interest using the following link:https://www.heathrowbusinesssummit.co.uk/
Discussions also centred around the need for future skills and ensuring that the next generation will be inspired with the support of large infrastructure projects, such as the Heathrow expansion.
Jonathan Cage, President of Norfolk Chamber said:
“It is important that Norfolk businesses, especially SMEs, take advantage of the opportunities that large scale projects such as the expansion of Heathrow could deliver. Whilst a large scale international company is likely to be the lead, there are still plenty of opportunities for Norfolk based companies to subcontract and supply specialist knowledge, skills and demonstrate good use of innovation and technology.”
