North East of England Process Industry Cluster

[1] The aim of the organisation being to represent and coordinate industry's collaborative activities on the wide ranging issues that impact on the future and performance of the energy intensive process sector, which includes petrochemicals; specialty chemicals; polymers; pharmaceuticals; biotechnology and renewables.

[28] Between 2005 and 2013 the NEPIC, cluster members, and its local authority partners helped to secure 83 significant investments into the process industry in the region totalling £3.7 billion.

An example of a Cluster collaboration in which NEPIC is a partner is the WIINTECH project, a worldwide intercluster initiative for new materials and processes focused on clean technologies.

[34] This collaborative project is aimed at building a common international strategy between 8 leading European clusters and to foster inter-cluster and transnational partnerships, extending international cooperation and developing a joint inter-cluster projects in areas such as technology and industrial partnerships, training & skills development, technology transfer, workforce and business mobility and business mentoring.

To assist with industry attraction and growth, NEPIC supports companies in securing their major capital projects, management buyouts (MBO) and start-ups.

The Cluster provides intelligence on local supply chain capabilities in areas such as site location, planning, infrastructure, raw material sourcing, engineering, logistics, measurement science, workforce development and legal advice.

This is the Business Acceleration for SMEs (BASME) project through which 1000 jobs were created in the process sector supply chain over 3 years.

[37] The BASME programme has enabled NEPIC to increase the interaction between process industry companies and their local supply chain such that after 30 months 327 SMEs had engaged with it adding 425 jobs.

[38] When complete, over 3 years, the BASME project reported that it had worked with 423 SMEs and helped them with business development that resulted in 1011 jobs.

[39] Similarly NEPIC created a programme to mentor 120 SMEs to improve their carbon efficiency and to accredit their sustainability credentials.

To further encourage SMEs in the north-east of England to Export, NEPIC collaborated with the North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC) and RTC North Limited to create a jointly owned subsidiary company Go Global Limited to manage the contract they had to deliver the United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI) (2016 onwards UKTI became the Department for International Trade – DIT), Government funded, support products and programme for all business sectors in their region.

Teesport is based on the River Tees and is currently the third largest port in the United Kingdom, and amongst the ten biggest in Western Europe.

This port handles over 56 million tonnes of goods per annum which are mainly associated with the local petrochemical, chemical and steel processing industries.

[45] This CCS technology option is being considered as a result of climate change regulations and the carbon taxation that could become a prohibitive cost for such energy intensive industries.

Examples of large scale commodity manufacturers in the NEPIC Cluster are Sabic making ethylene, low-density polyethylene and aromatics, Ineos acrylonitrile, GrowHow ammonia and ammonia based fertilizers, Ensus bioethanol and animal feed, Phillips 66 oil refining, Omya Calcium Carbonate, Huntsman polyurethane intermediates and titanium dioxide, Harvest Energy biodiesel and Greenergy fuel blending.

Examples on Teesside: Fine Organics, Chemoxy, Vertellus, Johnson Matthey, Koppers, Lucite International and Mitsubishi Chemicals.

[56] In 2013, SNF announced that they intend to build a polymer manufacturing unit on Teesside to make polyacrylamide emulsion for the oil industry.

Within the NEPIC cluster there are companies that provide laboratory facilities, manufacturing sites, logistics, construction and procurement, analytical sciences, validation consultants, maintenance, operation and financial services, public relations and contingency planning.

Small molecule drug scale-up and process development and manufacture is provided to current good manufacturing practice(cGMP) standards to pharmaceutical companies around the world by several NEPIC Cluster members such as Aesica Pharmaceuticals, Sterling Pharma Solutions, Piramal Healthcare, all of which are based in Northumberland and also by Fine Organics on Teesside.

Aesica, Sterling, Piramal (Northumberland) are companies that perform primary manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients(APIs) to cGMP standards.

The region produces 33% of the UK's GDP in pharmaceutical manufacturing with 95% of finished product exported to global markets[65] Biotechnology has become widely used in many industrial and academic activities and the following classifications have become established.

Fujifilm Diosynth Biologics at Billingham now employs over 550 people, the majority of them being graduate-level skills in biotechnology, to develop new products and innovative processes for the pharmaceutical industry.

Across the region, companies such as Leica Biosystems, Orla Proteins, Helena Bioscience, Thermo Fischer Scientific and Millipore are significant contributors to the growing strength of the sector and its supply chain.

Developments such as these are being supported by The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) which hosts the National Industrial Biotechnology Facility (NIBF) at Wilton International.

Members of the North East England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) are also focusing on development of biorefinery concepts which could impact on fine, speciality and commodity chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and bio-fuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel.

It identifies that the region has a particular strength in Architectural & Engineering Activities & Related Technical Consultancy (AETC) workplaces with 2810 such firms employing 13,385 people.

NEPIC's approach is to develop formal Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs)with industry clusters and business associations around the world and build partnerships to create knowledge sharing opportunities.

NEPIC has participated in joint meetings and projects with these organisations and has often managed reciprocal visits from groups of companies associated with the aforementioned bodies and countries.

[86] By 2017 NEPIC had become a key partner of the Indian Chemical Council (ICC) helping to define the agenda for their Annual Outlook Conference.

[87] The 2017 NEPIC led and UK Department for International Trade (DIT) trade mission to India had grown to include 21 business delegates who travelled to Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai[88] meeting companies the company members of the Karnataka Drug and Pharmaceutical Association (KDPMA), Tata Research Development and Design Centre and the members of the Indian Chemical Council.