Development in Furness

Furness and West Cumbria are experiencing growth that is unprecedented in a generation with emerging projects resulting in an estimated £20-40bn of new investment which started around the end of 2014 has continued for 5 years to now in 2019 and will extend well into the 2030s’.

The Dreadnought submarine programme alone is delivering £4.2bn GVA growth for Barrow and Furness by 2037.The whole of the UK benefits from this “National Endeavour” to the tune of £12bn by the 2050s’.

Since 2015 the area has seen may Major Projects comprise manufacturing programmes and construction projects occur, including the following:

• Walney Extension,the world’s largest wind-farm openedin September 2018;
• Crown Estate Round 4 licencing of new seabed acreage for windfarm projects;
• the £31bn Dreadnought submarine construction and integration programme, “a national endeavour” that is part of a larger £44bn submarine programme for MoD;
• Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA) open a large office in Barrow alongside one for Dreadnought Alliance;
• BAE SYSTEMS Global  Weapons UK investment in M77 for India;
• modernization of  the Barrow shipyard by BAE SYSTEMS;
• Orsted‘s 5th operations and maintenance base at the port of Barrow along with a new heliport at Sandscale Park;
• Walney Airport modernization, a multi-million pound BAE SYSTEMS scheme to enhance connectivity in support of submarine supply chain activity;
• Centrica Distributed Energy’S 49MW battery storage facility at Roosecote;
• Kimberly-Clark paper mill investment announced in spring 2019;
• GSK Ulverston new life sciences investment, and part site re-purposing;
• Spirit Energy decommissioning of DP4, DP6,BaInes Gasfield,south Morecambe terminal;
• 49MW battery storage for Centrica Distributed Energy
• £11m NHS Health Centre approaching completion in Duke Street,close to the town centre;
• a new £11m maternity suite and enhanced A ad E facilities at UHMBT’s Furness General Hospital; 
• 300,000ft2 of development at Waterfront Business Park;
• 16,084 ft2 managed business centre Harding Rise Barrow Waterfront;
• Beehive Business Park, Ulverston
• A590 Trunk Road,North Road and Michaelson Rd highway improvements in Barrow and Ulverston;
•  the Holiday Inn Express 127 bed hotel due to open December 2019 and several other new hotel / accommodation projects;
• Northern Rail  New trains and 10 daily services to and from Manchester;
• planned A595 Grizebeck bypass;
• new 14,000ft2 Bingo hall, Holker Street,Barrow;
• New 13,000ft2 HQ for Furness Building Society, Abbey Road, Barrow;
• United Utilities investment Ulverston.

The construction projects range from  new investment in life sciences at GSK Ulverston to further investment at barrow shipyard.

In west Cumbria Sellafield’s huge £2bn/year progamme is complemented by Drigg LLW Depository development 

A number of manufacturing expansion projects related to growth of multinational and SW Cumbria based firms’ local expansions are also likely to occur.These include

• new facilities to manufacture food;
• A £700m modernisation of Barrow shipyard  It involves developments by Morgan Sindall to create a  Primary Build Facility, new car parks and site infrastructure;

A large number of investment projects will be happening in and beyond 2019-20. many of these are listed below.

To help companies understand more about these projects FEDF has developed a Major Projects Briefing called “A Guide to Opening doors to major projects” which is available on request from stuart@fedf.co.uk.

The Guide outlines what the scope of each project is, who is involved, what their procurement and pre-qualification processes are and how to pre-qualify. The Guide’s information is supplemented by the knowledge of the FEDF team which can brief you on more specific detail about each project and where opportunities may lie to get involved with them.