• New £2 billion property investment portfolio launched, creating thousands of jobs and new homes across the country
• Projects set to benefit the creative, life sciences and retail sectors – including a new 12,500 seat stadium built in Gateshead
• Minister for Investment to showcase the projects at the UK’s largest property exhibition

The Department for International Trade has today (Wednesday 17 October) launched £2 billion worth of new investment opportunities which will create thousands of new homes and jobs across the UK.

The portfolio includes:

• Liverpool: The construction of more than 2,000 new homes at Festival Park and 1,000 new jobs in a new urban community at Paddington Village
• Gateshead: 5,000 new jobs at Follingsby Max, a new logistics and distribution centre in Gateshead, and a new 12,500 seater stadium at Gateshead Quays
• Edinburgh: A new world-leading bio and life sciences development at Edinburgh BioQuarter, which will make the city a leading hub for stem cell research
• Belfast: 21,000 sqm of new Grade A office space for the creative and technology sector at The Sixth, further enhancing the city’s growing reputation as a production centre for film and television
• Sussex: A new science and technology park at Burgess Hill, providing more than 90,000 sq metres of commercial space

The projects will create jobs and drive prosperity in local communities whilst contributing positively to the quality of life for local people.

International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox MP, said

It has never been easier to find opportunities for global investment in the UK and these seven projects worth £2 billion give investors the opportunity to do just that.

Not only will these projects promote our vibrant and successful real estate industry, they also create homes and jobs across the country. As an international economic department, our message is loud and clear: the UK is open for business, and we can help find the right investment for you.

Minister for Investment, Graham Stuart MP, said:

It’s a privilege for me to launch these new schemes, which will provide new homes and jobs for people across the country.

The UK is the number one destination in Europe for foreign investment, and we will continue to promote opportunities that help people find decent jobs and develop strong communities.

The 7 projects will be unveiled by the Minister for Investment at the MIPIM UK property conference being held in London this week and will include opportunities for UK and international investors in a range of sectors.

3,000 property professionals and over 300 potential investors and financial institutions from around the world will be in attendance.

Jake Berry MP, Minister for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth said:

From a transformed waterfront in Liverpool to rival any historic European city, to a new, state-of-the-art Quay in Gateshead, these new developments represent over £1 billion of world-class investment in the Northern Powerhouse.

With Government working hand-in-hand with business and attracting international investment from across the globe, we’re delivering transformative regeneration for communities from coast to coast across the North – further evidence that the Northern Powerhouse is one of the most business-friendly regions in the UK.

The portfolio has been put together by the DIT’s Capital Investment team which leads the government’s drive to attract and support international investment into large scale property, regeneration, infrastructure and energy projects across the UK.

This week the department will launch the Perfect Fit Prospectus – which uses technology to create individualised reports for potential investors – based on their country of origin and the sector they operate in – to give them the information they need to make an informed investment decision.

The new tool will help the DIT as it seeks to become the most innovative investment promotion agency in the world.

Further information:

• Further information on all seven new projects can be found on our investment website
• In the first half of 2017, 14% of global commercial property investment transactions occurred in the UK, second only to the USA
• The UK is also the leading European destination for venture capital investment, helping innovative firms quickly reach their potential, providing jobs and economic benefits across the UK

This week marks 90 years since Maentwrog Hydro-electric station began producing carbon–free electricity on 15 October 1928, and 50 years since Trawsfynydd nuclear power station officially opened on 18 October 1968.

Construction of both sites were incredible feats of pioneering 20th century engineering which, for Maentwrog, included the formation of the second largest man-made lake in Wales with the construction of its 4 concrete dams.

Trawsfynydd stopped generating electricity in 1991 but Maentwrog’s 30 megawatt power station has continued to generate carbon-free electricity, supplying around 4,000 gigawatts of to the National Grid over the last 90 years which is enough to power all the homes in Wales for 6 years.

Rainwater is collected from across the Snowdonia National Park through a network of rivers, leats and streams that feed into Trawsfynydd Lake. The water surges down 2 high pressure pipelines, at more than 4,000 gallons per second, to drive 2 turbines generating electricity. Just one inch of rainfall creates 24 hours of electricity generation.

Station Manager, Andy McAteer, commented:

Maentwrog has been operating since 1928 and will carry on harnessing this carbon-free energy source long into the future. We’ve got a close-knit team that has a unique opportunity to work on the site, knowing that we are only stewards of this beautiful and well-designed site looking after it for future generations.

Maentwrog’s younger cousin, Trawsfynydd Site, has had a successful year of decommissioning progress with many of the clean-up and hazard reduction projects coming to a successful end:

• hundreds of thousands of litres of radioactive waste have been safely retrieved, packaged and placed in the site’s interim term storage facility
• 3,300m2 of concrete walls and floors in the site’s former cooling ponds complex has been decontaminated
• over 1km of pipework has been removed
• several redundant buildings have been demolished
• 12,000kgs of a radioactive waste material known as ‘fuel element debris’ – created when the site was generating electricity – has been recovered and placed in safe storage

Trawsfynydd and Maentwrog sites are owned by the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the organisation responsible for cleaning up 17 sites dating back to the earliest days of the nuclear industry.

Nuclear Energy Minister Richard Harrington:

For 90 years Wales has been pioneering the UK’s move to a greener, cleaner economy producing low-carbon electricity and during our first ever Green GB Week it’s encouraging to see how the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is also leading the world in decommissioning by cleaning up the UK’s legacy nuclear sites in Wales.

The NDA’s Director of Nuclear Operations, Alan Cumming, said:

Our sites were built by pioneers of the nuclear industry. These sites were ‘world’s firsts’ when they were built and they made a remarkable contribution to this country throughout the 20th century.

Today, the UK is at the leading edge of nuclear decommissioning as we safely pioneer approaches to cleaning up the legacy from the earliest days of the nuclear industry, while delivering value for the UK taxpayer.

Welcome everyone.

Your excellency The Vice President of Ghana Dr. Bawumia,

Honorable Minister of Finance,

Honorable Minister of Trade,

Baroness Fairhead, Minister of State for Trade & Export promotion in the UK,

Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public in the Policy Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University,

Friends in the Diplomatic Corps and the Media,

Akwaaba.

We really genuinely are delighted that you could join us today. As Tony said a moment ago, I am Iain for those of you I’ve not met. For those of you that I’ve not met, I am very keen to meet you. My name is Iain Walker, it is spelt confusingly as a Scot with an extra “I”, so for those of you who find that confusing you can use my Monday-born alter-ego “Kojo”. I am perfectly happy with that as well.

It really is an absolute privilege to welcome such an esteemed group of guests to today’s Investment Summit.

Thank you, thank you again. I think in this room, we all know about “Ghana Beyond Aid”, about its focus on economic development, focus on investment, and focus on jobs. As Ghana moves beyond aid, it has been my top priority to make sure that we can adapt a UK response within the context of the G20 compact with Africa. Ghana Beyond Aid as set out by his excellency the President is a vision that the UK supports. As a long-time friend, as long-time partners, we want to work with Ghana, with you, to move this vision into implementation.

We believe, we hope, that the 2 billion pounds of development support over the last 2 decades, in particularly in the Health and Education sectors, has helped to play a role to make it possible for Ghana to now move beyond aid.

But, as Ghana changes, so too does the UK. As we look forward, as we look together beyond aid, we want to help define what comes next. And then we want to work with you shoulder to shoulder, together. We seek not to preach, but to work as partners, to work as friends and to take forward a deeper and more strategic relationship: job creation, inward investments, enhanced focus on trade, mutual prosperity, mutual interests. We can do more, much more, if we focus on clear common priorities.

To that end, we held our first ever UK-Ghana Business Council yesterday, co-chaired by his excellency the Vice President and by our Minister for Africa, Harriett Baldwin. And joined with the Honorable Minister of Finance, Honorable Minister of Trade and Adam Afriyie, the Prime Minister’s Envoy for Trade. We now have, I believe, an institutional mechanism for driving forward the UK partnership with Ghana. We want to use that to drive forward these regional priorities.

Today we have over 50 companies in the room, you are truly all very very welcome. We hope today enables you to understand the many investment opportunities here in Ghana, and also the opportunity for greater value-added exports.

Like the government of Ghana, we believe that Private sector participation is absolutely key. As Ghana seeks to move beyond aid, the UK’s approach to development changes – you will hear more about that in a moment from Baroness Fairhead.

Before I pass the ball, let me introduce some other colleagues here. I am delighted that Rachel Turner, our Director from DfID here, who not only knows Ghana very well, but is playing a key role in our changing approach of our policy. I am also pleased to welcome Tenbite Ermias, CDC’s Managing Director for Africa. You’ll hear from him, and you’ll hear from many more of our guests, UK Export Finance, from PIDG, from AgdevCo and others.

At this great moment I’m delighted that Baroness Fairhead has joined us. I’m going to not say too much, I’ll let her come up here in a moment. But thank you Baroness for joining us this morning.

We’ve also got in your packs there, there’s an article that Sir Paul Collier published in the Sunday times recently. I hope you read it, it talks about the importance of private sector participation in development, something that we share, something we believe. That’s why we put it in your packs this morning, but welcome again, Sir Paul, thank you.

Let me close by saying thank you to Tony Burkson, who has organized today, with Nana Frimpomaa and Colin Sykes and many others in the High Commission.

I hope that we facilitate better conversations for you all this morning.

But lastly, it’s the vision of Ghana beyond aid as it moves towards implementation, I hope that we can reflect on the shared values of our shared history. Let’s use that history not to dwell on the past, but to use that to create a future of an even stronger UK-Ghana relationship.

Thank you again.

Enjoy the Conference.