Business leader highlights Humber investment opportunities
PROMOTING the Humber region on a national and international basis could see investment secured in the manufacturing sector as well as the region becoming a hub for data storage.
The Humber has quickly become known as the energy estuary, but now, as plans take shape and investment is secured in the area, a leading business figure is highlighting where other important opportunities for growth lie.
Peter Aarosin, the chairman of Hull and East Yorkshire Bondholders, which aims to raise the profile of the area and attract investment, has entered his second year as chair of the private sector-led organisation.
After spending his first year working on ensuring businesses on both sides of the Humber were collaborating and creating a Humber-wide organisation working with all four local authorities, he is now keen to push the positive message further afield and secure all the opportunities on offer.
“The future is here and we’ve just got to grab it,” Aarosin said.
“We have been working hard to establish the region as the energy estuary but we now need to go out and promote ourselves further. I am convinced we can do so much better by going out and promoting ourselves nationally and internationally in a similar way we have been promoting ourselves in the energy sector.”
Aarosin, who is also the managing director of Goole-based Danbrit Holdings and Danbrit Shipping and chief executive of RMS Group, which has port operations in Hull, Goole, Immingham, Grimsby and Scunthorpe, said he believes the next sectors to really focus on promoting are the food sector, ports and logistics, manufacturing and digital.
“We have a great opportunity for more manufacturing to be based here. We are close to market and that is becoming more and more important. We have got an excellent opportunity to build more distribution centres and are ideally located for more manufacturing companies to come here.
“Logistics used to be an after-thought but it is now becoming an important factor to consider. The closer manufacturers are to the ports, the more cost effective the operation is.”
Looking at the digital sector, Aarosin pointed out that East Yorkshire, being home to KC, has the fastest broadband in the UK, and therefore this, with a range of other factors such as readily available energy and plenty of space, makes the region an ideal place to become a hub for data storage – something already being pushed in the City Plan.
Moving forward, Aarosin said that the Bondholders has plans in place over the next six months to continue promoting the region locally, nationally and internationally, as it strives to create more new jobs in the area.
