Mixed fortunes for job creators

By Martin Foster BBC News, Tees

Middlesbrough has the highest number of job seekers in the North East, and unemployment figures are expected to rise further in coming months.

The chemical company Invista is consulting over the closure of its nylon plant on Teesside, with 300 livelihoods on the line. Corus has announced it wants to sell Teesside's steelworks.

Plans to bring new industry to the river are still expected to create more than a thousand jobs this year, but one major contract is already in trouble.

Early in 2009, a newly built hull was supposed to be towed into the Tees, to be turned into a �300m state-of-the-art offshore oil drilling platform. Work has already begun on the job, with old shipyards coming back to life after years of inactivity, but now the client, Sea Dragon, has decided instead to send the work, and the 1,000 jobs it would create, to Singapore.

The oil platform is not the only giant they have been expecting to arrive on the Tees, though.

In February, the 32,700 tonne aircraft carrier Clemenceau is scheduled arrive on Teesside to be taken apart and recycled alongside four former US military vessels at Able UK's Graythorp Dock.

The company says the work will create 250 full time jobs on the Tees, and make the river home to the world's largest dry dock. Across the river there is something truly rare happening, massive investment from the retail sector.

Tesco is in the process of constructing a 1.2 million square foot distribution centre at Teesport.

Scheduled to open in the autumn, the development promises to create up to 800 jobs. In its shadow is a plain patch of grass. Once a Shell oil refinery, it has stood empty for two decades.

In 2009, engineers will begin preparatory work on what, when finished, will be one of the biggest container terminals ever constructed in the UK. The plans are ambitious, but the terminal is not expected to be fully operational until 2020.

After the years of work to bring these developments to the area, it appears now that they must swim the final strait against the economic tide.

Vessels laid-up on the Tees

Next to the Riverside Football Stadium, two vessels are berthed, sitting in cold storage until the economic tide turns enough to make it worth their owners' while to put them to sea.

Car imports through Teesport dropped by 25% in 2008 and 2009 is expected to see a fall in port traffic across the board.

Work on the port's container terminal should have been starting months earlier. The scrap metal from the ship recycling should have been worth far more than it is.

There is still plenty of confidence that 2009 will see new jobs coming to the Tees, but as old jobs go and contracts falter, business leaders are in no doubt that 2009 will be a tough year.

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