Foreign investors to pump £10bn into UK green infrastructure

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The Prime Minister will today announce the UK has secured £9.7bn of new foreign investment in UK green infrastructure at the Global Investment Summit.

He hailed 18 planned investment deals in wind and hydrogen energy, sustainable homes and carbon capture that will support green growth and create up to 30,000 jobs.

Among the headline commitments, Spanish electric utility giant Iberdrola confirmed it will invest £6bn in the East Anglia Hub through Scottish Power, subject to securing planning consent.

This will be Iberdrola’s biggest offshore wind development anywhere in the world and would supply enough green energy to power 2.7 million British homes, while creating 7,000 jobs.

While global logistics firm Prologis intends to invest £1.5bn over the next three years to develop net zero carbon warehouses across London, the south east and Midlands.

Malaysian conglomerate Petra Group will invest £30m in establishing its  Petra Modular business for production of sustainable modular homes, creating 225 jobs. It will also invest £30m in establishing Petra Group’s ‘Green Rubber’ business in the UK, which will see the development of a production facility creating 110 jobs.

 

Other deals announced at Global Investment Summit

US-owned waste specialist Viridor plans to invest up to £1bn in latest decarbonisation technology at its five UK sites to become the first net zero waste company by 2030.Turkish-owned Eren Paper is investing £500m to acquire a mill in Shotton, North Wales, and convert it to produce cardboard manufactured from paper waste. The mill will be powered by biomass fuel.Budweiser Brewing Group and green hydrogen energy services Protium have teamed up to invest more than £100m in a new hydrogen generation system to fuel the brewery’s production and also its key logistics assets, including heavy goods vehicles and forklift trucks.Jacobs will create over 150 jobs as it grows its high-tech Birchwood laboratory in Warrington, where Jacobs carries out research and development to support critical UK national infrastructure.Huaneng will invest in the 50MW Battery Storage project in StoneHill. This greenfield project is a major new milestone for energy storage in the UK and will employ local partners in construction and operationsHiPoint AG will invest £50m to create five new facilities for the recovery and processing of horse stall waste into reusable bedding, fertilizer & bio-fuels, creating 90 jobs across the UK.Ultimate Battery Company will invest £28m setting up a UK production plant for lightweight, eco-friendly batteries, creating 300 jobs.Global Marine will invest £10m in building hybrid engine crew transfer vessels and surface effect ships to service offshore wind infrastructure, creating 10 jobs in the East of England.HyPoint will invest £6.6m establishing a HQ in the South East for the development of their next generation hydrogen fuel cell system, creating 10 jobs.Treedom will establish a UK office in London for their online platform for planting trees, creating 10 jobs.Tes Amm is creating 15 new jobs in Scotland, doubling its electronic waste recycling solutions for lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles, consumer electronics and IT & mobile technologies.Sumitomo Corporation are launching Presidio Ventures Europe, a venture arm of Sumitomo, focused on energy and mobility.Peer-to-peer lending firm Zopa has raised £220m, led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, to grow their responsible and sustainable banking and lending services in the UK.Getir plan to invest £100m to rapidly expand its sustainable and superfast grocery delivery service across the UK, creating 7,000 permanent jobs in 2022. The business utilises a 100% electric fleet of delivery vehicles.

Bellway targets £1.25bn profit over next two years

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Bellway is expecting to generate around £1.25bn in cumulative underlying pre-tax profit over the next two financial years.

The returns will spell a bonanza for shareholders with one third of the cash distributed in dividends.

The target came as Britain’s fourth largest house builder posted a strong set of results for the year to July 31 2020.

Pre-tax profits rose to £479m from from £236.7m last time on turnover up to £3.1bn from £2.2bn.

Housing completions were also up to 10,138 from 7,522 with a target of hitting 12,200 homes by 2023. Bellway has a land bank of 86,571 plots.

Bellway also set aside a further net £51.8m as part of its “commitment to help owners of legacy apartment schemes undertake fire safety improvements”  bringing the total amount provided since 2017 in relation to post-Grenfell cladding issues to £164.7m.

Group chief executive Jason Honeyman added: “On a site level, we continue to undertake centralised layout and ground-work reviews, to ensure that quality is preserved, while driving further cost efficiencies in the construction process.

“We have also developed a matrix to help determine the optimum and most cost effective solution for retaining walls, depending on aesthetic requirements and we continue to encourage the sharing of best practice and new ideas through cross-functional and divisional working groups.

“Notwithstanding our strong commercial disciplines, overall cost inflation during the year has been in the mid-single digits, although this, in general, has been offset by rises in house prices.

“We continue to see price inflation on commodities such as steel, timber, MDF and polymers, but there are signs that some of the more pronounced price increases over recent months are beginning to subside.

“There remain ongoing constraints in the supply chain and intermittent labour shortages across the sector as, despite the vaccine success, colleagues, subcontractors and suppliers are subject to self-isolation requirements to curtail the spread of Covid-19.

“In addition, the national shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers and recent disruption to fuel supplies has had some impact on the availability of materials.  In general, these constraints are manageable by adopting good procurement disciplines and forward planning.

“They will, however, mean that construction output in the first half of financial year 2022 is likely to remain similar to that achieved in the first half of financial year 2021.

 

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Morgan Sindall takes social housing upkeep into ‘tech age’

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Morgan Sindall has developed a remote internal building performance home monitoring system that could revolutionise social housing repairs and upkeep.

The goldeni (pronounced golden eye) system developed by data scientists working for Morgan Sindall Property Services hooks up with commercially available ‘Internet of things’ sensors to provide real-time data about the health of a building and internal environment of individual tenants’ homes.

It can identify water leaks in real-time, and spots when a boiler needs to be serviced so that preventative action can be taken before a problem escalates.

The Goldeni software-based cloud platform collects temperature, air pressure, light levels, humidity and carbon dioxide data, as well as monitoring heating systems and electricity and gas consumption.

Morgan Sindall estimates that by helping landlords and tenants identify potential maintenance issues before they occur and remediate leaks before they escalate, goldeni could help the country’s social housing landlords potentially save over £550m per year.

Morgan Sindall’s software compiles the data to provides social housing landlords and tenants with clear, practical actions for more effective home operation.

For example, from collected ventilation data, goldeni can recommend opening more windows to ensure homes are less susceptible to mould.

By tracking which homes are using central heating too often or too little, goldeni can also help users identify properties that are in fuel poverty or requiring additional insulation.

John Morgan, Chief Executive of the Morgan Sindall Group said: “The launch of goldeni, our first technological innovation for the sector, represents an important milestone not just for Morgan Sindall but also for social housing as a whole.

“By giving clues to potential issues within homes even before they occur, it can help those living in social housing have healthier, safer, more energy efficient homes, as well as saving social housing providers costs.”

“While we’re initially focusing on social housing, its ability to provide an instant overview of a building’s health in real-time means that goldeni would just be as useful for commercial and private residential property owners as well, and that’s something we’ll be looking to roll out in the future.”

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Pay deal ends strike threat by cement drivers

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HGV drivers employed by Hanson have accepted an improved pay deal and dropped their threat of strike action.

More than 200 drivers employed by the company had overwhelmingly voted for industrial action in a dispute over pay which threatened to intensify industry cement shortages.

A new pay and conditions offer has now been accepted by the drivers following negotiations led by Unite.

Drivers will get:

A 2.75 % increase on all pay rates and allowances backdated to 1 January 2021A 3.25 % increase on all pay rates and allowances to be paid from 1 January 2022An increase in the overnight allowance to £42 per night from 1 October 2021A commitment to transform bank holiday working, with drivers informed in advance and volunteers used where possibleMental health awareness delivered jointly by Hanson management and Unite shop stewards to be concluded by first quarter of 2022A joint working agreement between Hanson and Unite including joint training from April 2022Management to share fleet replacement programme with drivers

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Our members at Hanson have demonstrated that by standing together they have secured significant improvements on pay and conditions.

“That is an example to all our union members. All employers also have to understand that Unite is absolutely determined to make sure that workers do not pay the price for the pandemic.”

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