On Thursday morning, Norfolk Chamber hosted another busy and thought-provoking business breakfast in a very sunny Great Yarmouth. We welcomed a room full of local businesses to Great Yarmouth Racecourse bright and early to make new business connections and hopefully instigate interesting discussion regarding the topic of the morning: Inspiring Norfolk supply chains for a project set to help create a Fossil Fuel Free Future.
Kindly sponsoring the event were Associated British Ports, who offer a range of services to support key regional industries in East Anglia, including the off-shore wind industry. We were pleased to welcome Dan Whyshall, who provided an informative overview to the company and the contribution it makes to the UK economy. In fact, ABP provides 5,300 jobs in East Anglia alone, delivers 500m tonnes of freight annually and contributes £360 million to the region’s economy. If you would like to find out more about this dynamic business, check out this video which encapsulates it brilliantly.
After a tasty and filling breakfast and lots of interesting discussion taking place around the room, giving delegates a chance to get to know one another and find out a bit about all of their various industries, it was then time to welcome the guest speaker for the morning. Susan Falch-Lovesey, Local Liason Office and Skills Champion at Vattenfall joined us to discuss how local businesses could be at the centre of the ground-breaking and impressive off-shore project, Norfolk Vanguard and Boreas.
Susan began by setting the scene and explained Vattenfall’s ethos and mission: to help create a Fossil Fuel Free Future, within one generation. The business, which is owned by the Swedish states, embodies this vision and keeps it at the heart of all of its projects, which include ground breaking Fossil Fuel Free Steel at industrial scale (Hybrit) and an E-Mobility charging system within thousands of charging stations across Europe (INCHARGE).
The reason behind Susan joining us in Great Yarmouth was to inform local businesses about Vatenfall’s latest project taking place on our very own coastline. As part of the Government’s Green Growth Strategy, Vattenfall are putting plans in motion to develop a wind farm powerful enough to sustain electricity supply for 10% UK households. As you can imagine, a project of this magnitude will need a lot of support, so Susan spoke to attendees about Vatenfall’s mission to get as many local organisations involved in the project as possible, hoping to have over 600 contracts in place ready to submit an application for the project. Susan was keen to highlight the message from Rob Lilley, Procurement Manager, that although they would be co-ordinating the project, it would be local business who would be building it and making the aspirations of Vattenfall a reality, as they believe ‘local knowledge and expertise are so important’.
After taking some questions from the guests, it was then time to close the session. Our delegates left to continue with their working day hopefully having made new business connections and feeling more informed, and perhaps inspired, by the innovative project soon to be taking shape on Norfolk’s coastline.
For more details about supply chain opportunities for Vattenfall’s project, take a look at the presentation from Thursday morning or visit their website to find out how you can get involved.
If you are interested in coming along to one of our Great Yarmouth business breakfasts, visit our events page or email us. The next one coming up is on Thursday 21st June 2018.
