Interviews with Osamu Inoue, President of Sumitomo Electric Group, Mike Engelbrecht, VP of Sumitomo Electric UK Cables Ltd and Màiri McAllan, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy at Port of Nigg groundbreaking ceremony.
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00:04 >> Let's start. One, two, three, four.
00:07 [clattering]
00:10 [applause]
00:12 >> Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
00:14 Thank you, everybody.
00:18 >> So this is a very good spot for landing the cable on the ships.
00:26 We are looking for so many places, and good port is one thing.
00:33 And the second thing, there is no high-voltage cable company here in UK and Scotland.
00:40 So it's a very good opportunity for us, so we can have a very good business opportunity here in Scotland and UK.
00:48 >> I think just in terms of services and the like,
00:51 we will definitely be drawing on the local community to offer those services to us, and we'll be supporting that.
00:57 As it is, from an equipment purchase point of view, we already have equipment purchased from local suppliers.
01:02 It will go into the manufacturing process.
01:05 So our locus of supply chain and jobs is, first of all, here in the area,
01:10 looking further afield to Scotland, the UK, and then if we can't get it within those confines,
01:14 then looking outside of that, but that certainly is our point of focus.
01:18 >> So this is the first investment of its kind from Sumitomo Electric Industries in Europe,
01:24 and it will be the only high-voltage cable manufacturing plant in the UK.
01:29 And when you consider just how important these cables are to the deployment of offshore wind,
01:34 which in turn is so important to tackling climate change and growing our economy,
01:38 you really see the magnitude of what we're talking about today.
01:41 So it's great to be here at this celebration.
01:44 >> This is a £350 million inward investment for the production of a manufacturing plant for high-voltage cables,
01:55 something that is important now to the deployment of offshore wind and will be absolutely critical
02:00 as we, for example, see ScotWind created right around the country.
02:05 It has the potential to create hundreds of jobs, including 150 here high-paid manufacturing jobs in the plant itself,
02:13 and will have a major impact locally, but it's also of national and international significance.
02:18 I've long taken the view that the energy transition and tackling climate change is of course an environmental imperative.
02:27 It's a moral obligation, but also doing it correctly, it can serve as perhaps the greatest economic and social opportunity of our time in Scotland.
02:37 And, you know, having worked on net zero policy for a number of years,
02:41 it's clear to me that communities in rural and island Scotland are principally where much of that work is going to be led.
02:48 So with this project being started here today, and with similar activity in Ardussey airport yesterday,
02:55 we can just see the regeneration that's happening in the Highlands, and I'm absolutely delighted about it.