Tees Maritime Cluster - The Engineering & Manufacturing Network

Background

The objectives of the Tees Maritime Cluster are to: 1) promote maritime skills and careers to ensure a pipeline of talent to drive growth 2) Encourage development of the Tees Valley maritime business ecosystem, and 3) Showcase the Tees Valley’s maritime offer to win new investment. In March this year, we received an overwhelming amount of support from a wide range of stakeholders on and around the river, who offered financial pledges and letters of support to assist us with our bid for a Tees Maritime Cluster. There have been huge delays in the government confirming the outcome of our bid, however on 8 November we received a confidential confirmation of approval, including the full amount of grant applied for of £117,000 match funding. Alongside our pledges this gives us a pot of £234,000. There were two key conditions though, firstly we had to set up the organisation by 6 December and secondly, we needed to adjust all our timelines as DfT was requesting that we still had to spend the initial pot and deliver the agreed outputs by 31 March 2026.

We formed a project team of relevant specialists from within the pool of organisations that had pledged support. This included Geoff Lippitt and Kirsten Donkin (PD Ports), Peter Snaith (Womble Bond Dickinson), Carl Wright (Clive Owen), Charlie Nettle (AV Dawson), Emma Cranie (Elite Consult) and myself. This team has been working immensely hard to ensure we achieved these conditions. This has involved updating the project delivery plan and liaising with the funders, drafting and reviewing Articles of Association, incorporation of a not-for-profit organisation, setting up a bank account, creating role profiles for directors and two executive roles (Executive Director and Operational Delivery Manager), seeking expressions of interest for the board of directors and appointing these roles. We have been under considerable time pressures to achieve this, but we are now in the final stages and it is looking like we’ll get this over the line.

There will be opportunities for everyone to be involved in this cluster. At this stage, Geoff Lippitt (PD Ports), Charlie Nettle (AV Dawson), Nicola Hanafin (Svitzer), Simon Clarke (Boluda Towage SMS) and I (as Steel Benders) have agreed to be the Founder Members, to hold the board to account. The board of directors will consist of up to 12 people, so far we have confirmed a very strong board including Gavin McCabe (Tees & Hartlepool Port Users’ Association (THPUA) and Cockfield Knight), Liz Law (PD Ports), Shaun Casey (RBT), Peter Snaith (Womble Bond Dickinson), Carl Wright (Clive Owen), Emma Cranie (Elite Consult), Owain Brennan (SeerBI) and Suzanne Hague (Teesside University). In due course, there will be several advisory/working groups and committees too. As previously advised, this cluster will complement the THPUA, other clusters and membership organisations in the region and the education and skills organisations already operating in the sector, such as High Tide and SBC Logistics Academy.

Our ask now

In addition to the media statement from DfT, the attached press release has been produced by the project team (thank you to Kirsten Donkin). We are also likely to see content released from Maritime UK. Please can you re-share any and all of the positive news you see about our new Tees Maritime Cluster through your networks and channels. There’s plenty out there already, I’ve copied a few links below for your information:

There will be more updates soon. Thanks for your support so far, we’ve got some exciting times ahead.