Boost for Ben Houchen as Teesworks wins £100m wind farm deal

One of the world’s biggest wind farm developers has agreed to invest £100 million to build a 70-acre plant on Teesside to assemble the wind turbines for a vast new offshore project.

Danish developer Ørsted is building the factory on land at Teesworks, Europe’s biggest brownfield site and the location of the former Redcar steelworks which shut down in 2015.

The investment is seen as a boon for local Tory mayor Lord Ben Houchen days after he was cleared of corruption.

The assembly plant will play a crucial role in the construction of the Hornsea 3 project off the Yorkshire coast, part of the world’s biggest offshore wind farm.

Copenhagen-listed Ørsted, one of Denmark’s largest companies with a £19 billion market value, could announce the deal as early as this week.

Its Teesworks plant is expected to initially create about 200 new jobs, but will unlock hundreds of millions of pounds of investment once up and running, according to industry sources.

The deal comes days after a report into claims of impropriety at Teesworks and South Tees Development Corporation that Houchen chairs found no evidence of “corruption or illegality”. The report did raise concerns about “transparency and oversight” at Teesworks, however.

Former Labour front bencher Andy McDonald used parliamentary privilege to accuse Lord Houchen of “industrial-scale corruption” in April last year, forcing the government to commission an independent report into the finances of Teesworks.

The report made 28 recommendations and criticised a lack of transparency, but rejected more severe allegations such as those put forward by McDonald, the MP for Middlesborough.

Houchen said that he would “review the recommendations to improve our processes and procedures in line with the report’s findings”.

Teesworks is a 4,500-acre site on the former site of the sprawling Redcar steelworks that was a major employer in the area until its closure in 2015.

The industrial zone is the UK’s largest freeport and a central plank of Houchen’s political promise to revitalise the local economy.

Ørsted announced late last year that it would press ahead with the building of the Hornsea wind project, the latest phase of which would be able to supply power to about 3.3 million homes. Doubts had been raised about its commitment to the project last March after Ørsted pressed the government for more support.

Ørsted shares fell to all-time lows last year after disclosing a $4 billion writedown after walking away from two offshore wind projects in the US.

The company’s 70-acre works at Teesworks is expected to house offshore wind components. Ørsted is understood to have also struck a deal with SeAH South Korean industrial conglomerate that is also building a large plant at Teesworks to produce 40-metre tall offshore turbines.

All parties declined to comment.