The port related facilities of the Eastern end of Wirral offer a unique opportunity of available land, skilled workforce, port and harbour facilities and access to an established supply chain to serve the West coast, East coast and Scottish West coast offshore renewable energy markets.
The world famous Cammell Laird shipyard offers the offshore wind industry an excellent range of opportunities for both manufacturing and pre-assembly as well as operation and maintenance bases for wind farms. Occupying a 120-acre site in Birkenhead with four dry-docks, including the largest on the west coast of Britain's mainland Cammell Laird also has one of the largest engineering construction halls in Europe and facilities for deep-sea service vessels. At the heart of the UK economy's shift to low carbon, by 2020 the offshore wind industry alone could be worth £75bn and support up to 70,000 jobs in the UK and the uniqueness of the Cammell Laird offer, alongside high quality port related land, is a key investment offer for Wirral as a place to target appropriate investment to support this sector.
Wirral is actively looking to develop a national Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) in Birkenhead.
Led by Mersey Maritime, partners including , Peel Energy, Wirral Council, Liverpool University and The Mersey Partnership want the TIC to promote collaboration between UK businesses and universities to maximise Britain's world-class research base and take forward innovation which meets the practical needs of the business world.
The centre will be based at Mersey Maritime's existing facilities in Birkenhead and act as a national hub for offshore renewable energy bringing together in one place major companies including Peel Energy and Cammell Laird, that have a proven track record in technology transfer, offshore development as well as UK and international industry links.