Monday 16 May 2011

Anglesey Aluminium Statement Today (UPDATED)

The owners of Anglesey Aluminium will be making a statement at lunchtime today — probably to reveal to which company or companies they will sell their Penrhos site to. The 184 acre site was put up for sale back in November last year with an expected price tag of £10m. More later.

The beach at Penrhos Coastal Park
UPDATE: Anglesey Aluminium has announced it has signed an option agreement to sell agricultural land and a portion of the Penrhos Coastal Park to a company called Land & Lakes who plan to create a holiday leisure resort there, which could create up to 600 full time jobs (though its not clear how many of these will be construction jobs). Furthermore they promise to sorce 70 percent of their 'produce' from the local area. More information here.

As this announcement relates to agricultural land and parts of Penrhos Coastal Park, this means that the fate of the actual Penrhos site of Anglesey Aluminium is still to be announced.

49 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holyhead Port has the potential to accomodate International shipping Freight.

Large Container vessels could load/unload on the redundant Tinto Jetty with containers stored in a nearby rail depot.

The infrastructure is already in place for such an operation and I think it's only a matter of time until the Port's full potential is realised.

Anonymous said...

Can it compete against Liverpool/Birkenhead? Not just as an international port but the air, road & rail distribution network?

Anonymous said...

It would be easier and quicker to dock at Holyhead than the Mersey Docks. Ships have to navigate the busy Mersey shipping channel before entering the docks through tidal gates.

It makes sense to move freight by rail to depots and then by road.

Anonymous said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-13408625

kp said...

So finally everything starts to become clear ... the plot is unsaleable unless massive government subsidies (WAG/WG and local council) are offered to potential bidders.

Best of all, if we have a holiday/theme park we can also have a sewage/waste plant next door.

So very Anglesey!

Anonymous said...

The beach in the photo is known locally as "Private Beach" and is a local treasure.

The main Penrhos beach is opposite the Tinto turn off, and let's hope it's around the main beach they plan to develop and not Private Beach.

Anonymous said...

Has this sunk Winston's proposals for Shell Rhosgoch?

Anonymous said...

So, more noddy jobs for locals, whilst the profits get shipped off the island.

We really ought to learn than all development isn't good development.

Presumably, this will see people having to pay to access recreational areas they've enjoyed for free now?

Anonymous said...

Digger - so there's no danger of the former being a shell company for the Industrial Lettings company?

Anonymous said...

Thank you Digger.

On similar lines, according to free info from Companies House, Land and Lakes Limited was formed in 2009 and Land and Lakes (Anglesey) Limited was only formed last year.

Some of the company-related websites will tell you what other directorships a particular director has. Usually they want money, which I don't have. But for example there's

http://www.checksure.biz/Director/RICHARD+MARCEL+SIDI-16584238.htm

which says (for free):

Number of current directorships and company secretarials held: 13

Number of dissolved directorships and company secretarials held: 7

See also
http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2011/05/16/holiday-park-could-create-600-jobs-at-anglesey-aluminium-site-55578-28702174/

"Land and Lakes is led by Richard Sidi, and property developer Brian Scowcroft, Chairman of KPPL and owner of one of the North West’s largest industrial estates, the 400 acre Kingmoor Park estate in Carlisle."

Time will tell.

Anonymous said...

Wonder what Land and Lakes track record running holiday parks is like?

"The Welsh Government had "worked closely with all parties involved" to develop "these exciting proposals", Carwyn Jones said."

"Meanwhile, its been revealed that a partnership of five local councils is in talks with Anglesey Aluminium Ltd about securing an option to purchase land on another part of the site for waste treatment.

The North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project (NWRWTP) involves Anglesey, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Gwynedd councils."

BBC

Anonymous said...

How on earth will IOACC planners ever cope with the application ....... This has the Ty Mawr fiasco written all over it.
AAM will walk away with nothing built or likely to be built .
Good exit stratgy

Anonymous said...

Any fool can make money out of building yuppie homes on beautiful beaches.

Newry Beach is earmarked for Yupppie homes and now Penrhos.

There used to be an Englishman who lived in Ravens Point who used to clamp cars to stop them parking close to the headland. Someone got wise to it and spoilt his fun by investing in heavy duty bolt croppers before leaving the mangled device on his doorstep.

He then built a wall to block the Public Right of Way over his land. The wall lasted all of a month until someone took a sledge hammer to it when he went back home.

Bolsachian

An Eye On... said...

Sidi is also connected to Darinian - a company that builds luxury lodge sites for re-sale as holiday homes.

Interestingly there is a company called Land & Lakes in America (near Chicago) that specialises in leisure site development, green energy production and waste management all of which are planned in the Penrhos area. Be interesting if anyone could find out whether Land & Lakes this side of the Atlantic is connected to Land & Lakes on the American side.

Anonymous said...

Private Beach is safe for bathing around high water but is a death trap for the first three hours of the flood tide. Not the kind of place to let your kids play without close supervision.

Strong tides and deep gullies form a lethal combination.

A brief history lesson - The Stanley Family of Penrhos lost two kids and a friend bathing on this beach many moons ago.

Anonymous said...

More tourism?

Ynys Môn needs real jobs.

the outsider said...

Anon @ 22.29 - what do you consider to be "real" jobs?

Anonymous said...

http://www.welshicons.org.uk/news/environment/north-wales-residual-waste-treatment-project-in-talks-about-securing-a-potential-site-in-anglesey/

Anonymous said...

outsider - skilled manufacturing. Jobs that pay the UK mean wage or above, ie 25K and upwards.

Without those Anglesey will slowly die.

Desperate for Work said...

Depressing is it not that at the first hint of this encouraging and massive economic development, with its potentially huge benefits to Anglesey...the NIMBYs are already out against it.
Wake up and smell the coffee boys !

Anonymous said...

oh yeah, holiday in the sun. As if?



http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2011/05/17/150-000-tonnes-of-waste-could-be-dumped-on-anglesey-55578-28705113/

An Eye On... said...

The average wage in Wales is 26.3K per annum which is slightly more than 4K below the UK average however this is significantly higher than the average working wage which is around 16K (the difference is apparently removing managerial and professional salaries leaving skilled, manual, retail and clerical etc). Anglesey is believed to be below the figures for Wales. In 2009 Anglesey's average gross working wage was around £19.6K. This included Anglesey Aluminium and has fallen since then. Even then it was only 56% of the UK GVA.

The median household income ie the total income - wages, benefits, pension, JSA, tax credits etc, going into the complete household, net of housing costs is only £313 per week with approximately 25% of households getting less than that. Anglesey's median figure is thought to be slightly lower in income and slightly higher in number of households getting less.

A good but slightly dated (2009)slide show is this one which shows the wage impact of the various solutions for Wylfa.
www.walesregen.co.uk/presentations/bs12_sashawynndavies.ppt

Incomes is a difficult thing to assess properly but it is fair to say that the overall picture is that we are gskint on Anglesey and getting skinter in real terms.

The only way to reduce that is a large-scale injection of long term manufacturing jobs that pay above average so that it lifts the average. Service sector jobs - welcome under the banner of 'better than nothing' will not solve the problem and in fact will make things worse in the long run as if and when high paying jobs appear the employer will be 'encouraged' to pay less because of local wage levels that already exist.

kp said...

Oh Red Flag, dream on.

Your world is really so long past; highly paid manufacturing jobs require a highly skilled workforce and a highly skilled workforce is a product of a highly focussed education.

You and yours have done so much to reduce standards of education on this island (and throughout Wales) to the absolute minimum we should be grateful for any jobs, let alone high paying ones.

We only have ourselves to blame!

An Eye On... said...

The problem KP is that a lot of employers expect to find a ready-trained workforce whereas previously they would train them themselves and in fact using Vauxhalls at Ellesmere Port as an example they train all their own assembly and general operatives at their expense even though it takes them months before they get any productive work from them.

kp said...

Don't disagree Red Flag, but the cost of training a workforce in Anglesey is a lot higher than training one in Ellesmere Port. As such, why bother.

No, it is we that must train ourselves to overcome our shortcomings.

An Eye On... said...

Well I disagree with you KP. It is blatantly obvious that Anglesey's real problem is not education but geography. The same as it is for all of the western half of Wales from top to bottom.

Anonymous said...

"the cost of training a workforce in Anglesey is a lot higher than training one in Ellesmere Port."

Says who, and so what anyway? The cost of doing pretty much ANYTHING is a lot higher in London than the equivalent cost almost anywhere else in the UK. Does that hurt London much? Not as far as I can tell, because the relevant people think London has other things to offer to compensate for its ridiculous costs (though personally I'm not sure what; I'd much prefer Anglesey).

An Eye On... said...

Exactly anon. If anything the cost of training a workforce here should be lower than most - if not all, of England

kp said...

Then why doesn't this same logic apply to council tax charges? And eating out? And going to the dentist? And having your haircut?

An Eye On... said...

In what way KP? Council Tax on Anglesey is cheap. There are poorer parts of England that pay bith more and less and likewise richer parts. You seem obsessed with council tax and unable to accept that it's pretty cheap here and that the services provided are pretty good value for money.

The cost of going to the dentist has nothing to do with the cost of training one. Dental schools are where they are and that has no bearing on the price charged once they are qualified. They and hairdressers are ruled by the same rule of sales - never charge a punter a quid if you can charge them 2 and if you have a closed captive market, bleed it for everything you can. If you want cheaper dentists/hairdressers then you need more competition and dentists who will work for less. But for that you need a certain density of population and things compressing into a smaller area.

kp said...

Red Flag, now apply that same logic to all and everything here on Anglesey, both public and private sector.

All private sector operations will charge as much as they can get away with, and this will continue until competition (or lack of business) drives prices down.

How lucky we are that increased mobility allows most of us to choose to whom we give our business.

Public sector operations should work on the principal of providing more for less, on an annual basis.

Otherwise, we must be given the right of choice, the choice to accept or decline any such council services.

Sounds sense to me.

An Eye On... said...

You do have a choice KP. Live here or move somewhere else.

I fail to see why you think the services from Anglesey Council are poor value for money and can only assume that you haven't lived anywhere else in the last decade or are having your view 'coloured' by the antics of the councillors (who have little to do with service delivery).

The public sector 'more for less annually' you mention along with the right to accept or decline council services is an utter nonsense. I could say I shouldn't pay for services connected to children because mine are no longer at school but that is a stupid idea. Does that mean when I'm old and I need services that those children (now grown up) shouldn't pay for them?

It's precisely because that cannot be done that they are public sector. Privatisation does exist in services where it is practical (such as refuse collection) and contracts are bid for by contractors but it has to be delivered as a package to be cost effective and to be managed to a standard and comply with various legislations.

The whole idea is as ridiculous as it is blatantly selfish.

kp said...

No Red Flag, surely the solution is for the council to start providing more for less. And if it cannot provide more for less then it must allow people the right to choose what services they want and what services they are prepared to pay for.

Otherwise where will it all end, we have to go to work just to pay our ever increasing council tax.

Madness.

Anonymous said...

"Public sector operations should work on the principal of providing more for less, on an annual basis."

Why ? And why only the public sector?

Anyway, for readers who may not actually be aware (I'm not sure if kp is one) businesses don't actually pay Council Tax. The level of Council Tax therefore has no direct impact (and negligible indirect impact) on their decision to locate on Anglesey or elsewhere.

On the other hand, the amount of support available (directly or indirectly) to a given business (and its staff) from the Council may well affect their decision to locate on Anglesey. And the level of support is ultimately limited by the available funding.

Back to business rates vs Council Tax: As explained authoritatively elsewhere, the amount of Uniform Business Rates (those are the magic words) that a business pays is determined at a national level.

The premises are valued using national guidelines, and the Uniform Business Rate Multiplier is set at a national level, and the product of the two, as determined by that national process, determines the amount of rates a given business will pay. Anywhere in the UK.

At the moment, this national system means that richer councils (typically in South East England) are subsidising less well off councils (in a great many places, including Anglesey).

There is a proposal from Paul's party colleagues in the Millionaire's Cabinet to stop this cross subsidy (at least in England).

Currently UK local councils rely on Council Tax for less than 20% of their spending, the rest comes from Central government. When the subsidy stops, then what?

Madness? You work out who's mad, dear reader.

An Eye On... said...

KP

I am not old (yet) Do I begrudge paying meals on wheels for those that are? No. It would be infantile of me to do so.

My children have long gone. Do I begrudge paying a chunk of my CT to help schools? No.

No one has murdered or robbed me, nor is my house on fire. Do I begrudge the Police and Fire their part? Nope.

My bins don't need emptying once a fortnight - once a month will do. Do I think that I should only pay half? No.

I'm not scared of the dark. Do I begrudge street lighting?

I'm not homeless. Do I begrudge B&B accommodation? Only landlords who exploit it.

And I could go on. Each and every service the council provides - whether I use it or not, I benefit from either directly or indirectly and so do you.

And anon above - you're right about business rates. When I paid them the local authority concerned was very public about the fact it had no control over business rates and was really just the unpaid collector passing all of it on to central government without even being allowed to deduct so much as an admin charge and being fined if they didn't hit collection targets.

Anonymous said...

'When the subsidy stops' people ought to have to start paying for the services that they actually want.

Those 'in need' must look to their families in the first instance. People must start to take responsibility (paying) for them and theirs. And if you can't pay, you can't have.

Charity begins at home ...

An Eye On... said...

"Those 'in need' must look to their families in the first instance. People must start to take responsibility (paying) for them and theirs. And if you can't pay, you can't have. Charity begins at home"

That is a ridiculously naive statement, has never been true and never will be.

Anonymous said...

"Charity begins at home ..."

And there's an equal and opposite saying, as always: let the devil take the hindmost.

I thought in the years since the war, we had been supposed to be building "a land fit for heroes". Apparently not, at least not in your world, though even Cleggeron seems to think we do have ground to make up on the "military covenant", but that's another story.

Anonymous said...

What is it about about folk on Anglesey - all they do on every forum/blog site they ever set up is moan and groan about the latest potential development idea - pathetic !!!! Why not use your energy to get behind some of these ideas .

Anonymous said...

It's because they have had to listen to these things for donkeys years.

All they want is relatively simple answers to relatively simple questions. For example:-

When will this be done?
How many full time permanent jobs will there be once it is built?
What wage levels are we looking at?

That's all they want too know.

Now lets see if you can get the answers to them.

Anonymous said...

"Why not use your energy to get behind some of these ideas ."

Because we've seen them all before and none of them benefit locals.

The last person I met walking his dog along the woods of the AA woodland was Albert Owen MP. Will he be finding somewhere else to escape the noice of Holyhead now?

;) said...

Off topic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-13433923

Good job their not masons - or not

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 17 May 2011 22:56

'When will this be done?

Never if we keep messing about , what developer in his right head would want to get involved in this area of negativity.One day they will all give up and just leave us fester I suspect.

How many full time permanent jobs will there be once it is built?

Is that for the planning / economic unit to bottom out ... anyway whatever is built will create jobs or should I say more jobs than we have now

What wage levels are we looking at?'

So what this got to do with anything ... surely any wage is better than no wage or are we all waiting to the banks to move up from Canary Wharf

For god sake lets get somthing built !

Anonymous said...

Never if we keep messing about , what developer in his right head would want to get involved in this area of negativity

I think you have an exagerated sense of the importance of the local opinion. Developers will develop if there is money in it for them. The opinion of the locals is of no relevance to them.


anyway whatever is built will create jobs or should I say more jobs than we have now
The only jobs that really count are the longterm ones. The longterm jobs will be working on the site once complete. Whether Anglesey has a higher or lower rate of unemployment by then is an 'unknown'. My money is on higher - the council employs far to many people in comparison to the size of the local population and will probably be forced through lack of funding top shed a significant number of jobs over the next 5 years or so.


surely any wage is better than no wage

That's not true actually. The GVA on Anglesey is that low that creating low-paying jobs is actually making it worse. There will be no econmomic recovery on the island until the GVA is raised substantially. In addition, over the next few years tax credits will be reduced in real terms meaning low paying jobs even topped up with tax credits willnot generate sufficient disposable income to fuel growth.

An Eye On... said...

From this week's HAM:-

KPPL marketing director Evelyn Goddard, explained: “The 600 jobs that we quoted are an estimate for the long term running of the facilities and do not include construction jobs, which will be over and above this.
“The long term jobs will be an approximate mix of 15% managerial/professional, 15% skilled/technical (including chefs), 10% administration, 10% supervisory and 50% unskilled.
“We will be looking to maximise opportunities for training on site, but it is too early to go in to any details.”


If true, and there are no more heavy job losses betwen now and then, this will all but eradicate thse from the umemployed list that are employable. Can't see local employer's liking it though as it will increase competition for labour and drive wages up.

Be fun to watch.

Anonymous said...

Think a bit of poetic licence is being used here. Think they are including seasonal & part-time and possibly temporary agency staff when they have banquets, functions etc. Be interesting to see how many are actually all year and full time. Doubt ot will be anywhere near 600

Anonymous said...

Let's be realistic about this and stop talking pure shite. Such a venture is never going to employ 600 people.

The same carrot was dangled over Newry Marina Development in this case it was 400 jobs.

There is no doubt we need jobs, but on the other hand, allowing developers to make a quick buck by developing our coastline is a kick in the balls.

Anonymous said...

Let's be realistic about this and stop talking pure shite

That's the point thoughh. The article in the Mail quotes the developers as saying that this will employ over 600 people once complete and does not include the construction force.

The council has swallowed it hook line and sinker so it better be true are they are a bunch of male appendages.

Anonymous said...

The priority must be to remediate and rehabilitate the land that has been used for AA operations NOT to develop "greenfield" coastal land.

Any proposal(s) that do not address this fundamental principle should be dismissed.