'1,000 New Jobs

at Teesworks!'

The Houchen

 PR Machine

Never Sleeps

Teesworks Gatehouse

Scott Hunter

19 April 2022

Another day, another announcement of more jobs at Teesworks. Yes, the Northern Echo reported yesterday, Monday 18 April, that “another major offshore wind company is on the verge of opening a new factory in the North East, bringing 1,000 jobs to the region”.



The Echo goes on to explain that “the large international investor, which cannot yet be named due to a non-disclosure agreement, makes subsea cables for the offshore wind industry.” The deal, if agreed, will see a factory built on the Teesworks site. Ben Houchen, meanwhile, would not be drawn on specifics, but “hinted an agreement was close to being agreed”.

Good news, then.

It’s enough to have Corney and Musgrave, the developers to whom Houchen recently donated Teesworks, bouncing with happiness. Or perhaps they’re scratching their heads given that there are a couple of things about this announcement that are a little odd.

One of these is its suddenness. On 24 March, STDC CEO,  Julie Gilhespie, in her report to the board  stated, “Very promising conversations are underway with a number of other potential inward investors but nothing has yet reached the stage of being worth noting in this report.”

Now, less than a month has elapsed since Gilhespie made those comments, and then this exciting development makes it into the Echo. That’s fast.

Another thing that’s odd about this announcement is its timing. Monday 18 April was a bank holiday, as was the Friday before. So, the last day that anyone in the management of Teesworks was at their desk was Thursday 14 April. Making Thursday the last day any credible announcement of new investment in Teesworks could have been made. Why wait until Monday?

The indications are that this is a fluff piece by the Echo, which, as so often in the past, is operating as an extension of Houchen’s own PR team. And the Echo on this occasion was the only newspaper to run the story, which only adds to the suspicion surrounding it.

The paper states the deal, “if agreed”, will see the factory built on the Teesworks site. But agreed between whom? It happens that the deal in question may be with the government, not Teesworks, as potential investors haggle over subsidies.

 This was the case with financier Edi Truell in 2019. According to the Times, he proposed building a factory on Teesside to manufacture 1,000 miles of subsea cabling for a scheme to connect the UK to Iceland. He wanted the government to agree to a ‘contract for difference’ that would have guaranteed a minimum price for the imported electricity. They didn’t, and the scheme hasn’t been heard of since.

Ultimately, the most interesting thing about this announcement is what it reveals about how Houchen’s PR team, with the help of the Echo, creates propaganda. To begin with there is the matter of the number of jobs to be created, which is probably always an optimistic fiction. To counter criticism of this, announcements now typically differentiate between construction jobs, direct employment, and jobs in the supply chain. In this article, even that is dispensed with, however, and only the single figure of 1,000 jobs is given.

Then there is the matter of headline grabbing. Only about a quarter of the article concerns the news of the new factory. The remainder is a rehash of what the paper printed in February about the deal struck with South Korean firm, SeAH. So, the latest announcement is used as an excuse to reissue old news.

And finally, there is the insertion of dubious information. The article itself does not herald the arrival of GE Renewables, but the caption on the picture at the top of the article, showing ground preparation work on the site, reads “Preparations to level the site for SeAH and GE are almost complete”. A little later there is a hyperlink: “Read more: Plans revealed for huge 1,500-job SeAH Wind factory at Teesside”, the inference that these will be jobs at the factory. Yet no such claim has been made by SeAH. They claimed 750. The Echo has doubled it, but as with the statement about GE, it is on the page but not part of the text of the article. So, the article itself contains no manifestly false statements.

Wholly disingenuous, the PR team-Northern Echo collaboration is providing oxygen for the optimists, the happy band of Houchen hero worshippers. Will the unnamed investors get their subsidy, or will the story melt quicker than a lemontop on a sunny day? We’ll have to wait and see.