Rolls-Royce has agreed to sell its Bergen Engines business in Norway to Retford-based Langley Holdings in a deal worth £60m. The deal is part of the Derby manufacturer’s plans to dispose on non-core businesses and save £2bn.
The sale includes the Bergen Engines factory, service workshop and foundry in Norway; engine and power plant design capability; and a global service network spanning more than seven countries. Bergen Engines employs more than 900 people worldwide including 650 in the main factory in Hordvikneset.
Langley Holdings is a global, engineering group with its main operations in Germany, Italy, France and the UK, alongside a substantial presence in the US. The group employs around 4,600 people. Its activities range from the production of uninterruptible power systems, packaging machinery and electric motors and generators, to the manufacture of safety-critical mechanical handling equipment including for the UK Ministry of Defence’s submarine missile loading facility at Coulport, Scotland.
Uniper has announced plans to end generation at its coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant in September 2024, a month before the UK Government’s legal requirement to do so.
The Nottinghamshire-based plant has four 500MW units. Under Uniper’s plans, one will come offline in September 2022 and the remaining three will be taken offline two years later.
Ratcliffe-on-Soar will be the UK’s last coal-fired power plant. EDF, which owns and operates the West Burton A plant in Nottinghamshire, is planning to close the facility by September 2022, while coal generation at Drax’s facility in Selby, North Yorkshire, will be closed by the same date but sooner if possible. These, at present, are the UK’s last three coal plants. Generation is legally required to cease by the end of October 2024.
Work has begun at Selby’s Drax Power Station to upgrade one of its turbines and complete a £40m investment in Europe’s largest renewable power generator in North Yorkshire.
Over the next four months, more than 1,000 contractors will work around the clock to enhance the performance of one of the station’s four biomass units and improve its efficiency.
The project will include installing a new high-pressure turbine barrel, new pipework and surveying the station’s boilers as part of Drax’s plans to slash the cost of its biomass power generation by around a third by 2027.
The upgrade is the third and final upgrade as part of the investment programme in the station’s turbines which started in 2019.
The Humber’s green manufacturing sector has got the wind at its back after £266m of investment was agreed to develop the next generation wind turbines.
The Government, Siemens Gamesa, and GRI Renewable Industries have revealed significant commitments which will create and protect 1,340 jobs.
The region is key to the UK’s ambitions to be a world leader in offshore wind manufacturing.