Cable facility will create 80 jobs at port

EIGHTY jobs will be created after a cable manufacturer?s decision to open a facility in the North-East. JDR Cables Ltd is to open an umbilical cable manufacturing facility at a dockland site in Hartlepool. The subsea cable manufacturing company has signed a 15-year lease with PD Ports for the site. An existing PD Ports warehouse at Hartlepool will be converted into an umbilical cable manufacturing facility employing 80 staff.

JDR, which provides umbilical and cable systems for the offshore oil and gas as well as wind farm sectors, will operate from the 100,000sq ft factory, on the deep-water berth at Hartlepool Dock.

The facility will enable JDR Cables tomanufacture umbilical and subsea power cables weighing up to 2,200 tonnes.

JDR Cables? existing facility in Ely, Cambridgeshire, which will run in addition to the Hartlepool facility, will be dedicated to work-over umbilical systems for deep-water oil and gas projects and other products that can be transported by road.

JDR selected the PD Ports site at Hartlepool because of its proximity to a deep-water quay. This will allow cables to be spooled directly from the manufacturing facility to offshore cable laying vessels moored on the nearby deep water quay, as well as installation reels up to 9.2m in diameter.

MichaelMcConnell, property director of PD Ports, said: “We are delighted to have signed this agreement with JDR Cable Systems at Hartlepool. The town has a longstanding history with the offshore sector and is home to various major facilities serving the offshore industry.

“The signing of this new agreement further cements PD Ports? growing role in the offshore support sector.”Although the companies that became JDR Cable Systems have more than 75 years of experience, the company in its present form was established about ten years ago.

It was a combination of Jacques Cable Systems in Britain and De Regt Special Cable in the Netherlands.

Earlier this year, PD Ports, the owner of Teesport, was granted planning approval for the Northern Gateway scheme.

The [pounds]300m investment will increase the capacity of PD Ports? deep-water container terminal on the River Tees sixfold, turning it into amajor international freight destination, allowing ships from Asia and the Far East to dock and unload on the Tees by 2011.

No one from JDR Cables Ltd was available for comment.