The North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) is an economic cluster developed in accordance with Michael Porter's theories and strategies regarding industrial clusters. The chemistry-using sectors in North East England, where more than 1,400 businesses are headquartered in the industry's supply chain, formed this Process Industry Cluster. In the north-east of England, the industry employs approximately 35,000 direct workers and around 190,000 indirect workers, who collectively account for more than one-third of the area's industrial economy. Companies in the cluster produce 35% of the pharmaceuticals and 50% of the petrochemicals used in the UK, making this area the only net exporter of goods from the country. The area has more than £13 billion in exports.

NEPIC was created in 2004 by the leaders of local chemistry based process industry companies that are based in the north-east of England. The aim of the organisation being to represent and coordinate industry's collaborative activities on the wide ranging issues that impact on the future and performance of the energy intensive process sector, which includes petrochemicals; specialty chemicals; polymers; pharmaceuticals; biotechnology and renewables. These issues include renewable and more sustainable energy opportunities, innovation and R&D interests, energy pricing capacity and availability, carbon taxation and carbon emission reduction technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), graduate and technician skills for the sector and industry growth to ensure that the region remains a globally important location for the chemical industry.

NEPIC has been recognised by the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) in the UK for its work in informing stakeholders about the sector and by the professional institutions in the UK for its engagement and representation of industry issues. The Northeast of England is recognised and promoted by the Department for International Trade (DIT) (formerly UK Trade and Investment (UKTI)) arm of the UK Government as a leading location in the UK for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the chemistry using industries.

NEPIC is led by industry through its Industry Leadership Team. These industry leaders at intervals of their choosing elect a person to be the Chair of NEPIC. Since its inception the cluster has been Chaired by Ian Shott CBE, Robert Coxon OBE, Paul Booth MBE and most recently former MP Ian Swales who is the current chair person. Dr Stan Higgins has been NEPIC's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since its formation in 2004. Dr Higgins announced that he is to retire during 2017. On 1 June 2017 NEPIC announced that former Chair of the UK Parliamentary Business Committee and labour MP Iain Wright is to become the CEO of NEPIC.

Strategy for growth

The Industry Leadership Council of NEPIC regularly revisits the Cluster's Strategy for Growth, after first publishing it in 2006. NEPIC and the Industrialists concerned were commended for this work in the UK Parliament. The NEPIC Strategy is published and approved at the organisation's Annual General Meeting (AGM). The most recent strategy was published in December 2012.

Performance

GVA creation NEPIC's overall performance against its strategy and as a Cluster body is measured in terms of economic development within its region. This is monitored by its Industry Leadership Council and public sector observers through key performance indicators (KPIs). These mostly relate to the cluster's results in attracting and assisting both indigenous and foreign direct investment (FDI) investment, as well as business growth in the local SME supply chain and any resulting job creation. These factors contribute to an overall performance measure of Gross Value Added (GVA). Results from the six year period 2005 to 2011 show that through its industry led activities, by 2017, NEPIC's activities are contributing significant levels of GVA to its local economy. to the UK economy.

In December 2013, NEPIC reported to its local Members of Parliament that since 2005 the Cluster had secured 83 significant investments and 4,000 jobs which now contributes more than £2 billion GVA to the local and UK economy. The ongoing work of the Cluster particularly with the Small & Medium Size (SME) business community via the Clusters Business Acceleration for SMEs (BASME) project has seen the Clusters impact on its local economy grow to £2.5 billion of GVA per annum by 2015. By 2017 the total GVA contribution of NEPIC had climbed to £3.34 billion.

Process industry investment Between 2005 and 2013 the NEPIC, cluster members, and its local authority partners helped to secure 83 significant investments into the process industry in the region totalling £3.7 billion. The companies making significant investment during this period into the Cluster footprint include:

Many of the above projects and those of other NEPIC member companies have been assisted in their investment plans by grants made available by the United Kingdom Government. The Regional Growth Fund (RGF) has supported many projects within the Cluster footprint.

By 2017 the Cluster reported that it has been involved in landing 95 process industry investments into its region worth well over £4 billion and adding 5,000 jobs.

Collaborative projects

NEPIC has participated in a number of European Union funded cluster collaboration projects and collaborative innovation projects, thereby enabling its members to participate and access the benchmarking and business best practice that is being developed and shared. On some occasions NEPIC participates in the role as project leader/manager and in others as a partner organisation. An example of a Cluster collaboration in which NEPIC is a partner is the WIINTECH project, a worldwide intercluster initiative for new materials and processes focused on clean technologies. This collaborative project is aimed at building a common international strategy between 8 leading European clusters and to foster inter-cluster and transnational partnerships, extending international cooperation and developing a joint inter-cluster projects in areas such as technology and industrial partnerships, training & skills development, technology transfer, workforce and business mobility and business mentoring. NEPIC and the other Clusters involved have undertaken joint market visits to Japan, USA, Korea, Brazil, and India to promote the EU process industries while focusing on fast growing lead markets such as clean technology. The LOCIMAP collaboration on the other hand is a project that is being led and managed by NEPIC with 13 international partners who together are investigating best practice and developing new ideas for the development of more efficient industrial parks in the future.

Business support

NEPIC provides technical, funding and business advice to new investors and indigenous businesses.

To assist with industry attraction and growth, NEPIC supports companies in securing their major capital projects, management buyouts (MBO) and start-ups. The Cluster provides intelligence on local supply chain capabilities in areas such as site location, planning, infrastructure, raw material sourcing, engineering, logistics, measurement science, workforce development and legal advice. To deliver projects NEPIC partners with its Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) Tees Valley Unlimited and the North East LEP (NELEP). It works internationally to attract investment and partners with other European locations for the chemical industry through the European Chemical Site Promotion Platform (ECSPP).

In line with the Cluster's strategy, NEPIC manages several business support products to help SMEs grow. The Cluster secured a Regional Growth Fund project to mentor 400 SMEs in this region into new business within the process sector. This is the Business Acceleration for SMEs (BASME) project through which 1000 jobs were created in the process sector supply chain over 3 years. More than 200 SME's signed up to this programme in the first 18 months and created over 170 jobs. The BASME programme has enabled NEPIC to increase the interaction between process industry companies and their local supply chain such that after 30 months 327 SMEs had engaged with it adding 425 jobs. When complete, over 3 years, the BASME project reported that it had worked with 423 SMEs and helped them with business development that resulted in 1011 jobs.

Similarly NEPIC created a programme to mentor 120 SMEs to improve their carbon efficiency and to accredit their sustainability credentials. This enabled some of NEPIC's SME member's supply chain data to be available to Tier 1 companies which from 2013 onwards, in the UK, are expected to have a mandatory requirement to supply their carbon footprints on an annual basis. NEPIC's scheme called Developing Low Carbon Sustainable Industry (DEELOCSI) receives financial support from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Union.

To further encourage SMEs in the north-east of England to Export, NEPIC collaborated with the North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC) and RTC North Limited to create a jointly owned subsidiary company Go Global Limited to manage the contract they had to deliver the United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI) (2016 onwards UKTI became the Department for International Trade – DIT), Government funded, support products and programme for all business sectors in their region. The UKTI business support products, to help grow international trade, are aimed at supporting individual SMEs to grow their exports and they also support the Cluster and its members with trade missions to new markets.

In order to share knowledge with and support other business sectors in the north-east of England, NEPIC is a member of the Northern Business Forum (NBF). This business led forum also links the Cluster to wider business issues, both locally and nationally, through the local & national business membership organisations represented. Members of the forum include the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Confederation of British Industry (CBI) North East, the Engineering Employers Federation Northern (EEF), The Institute of Directors (IOD), The North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC), Service Network, RTC North and NEPIC. The Association of North East Councils (ANEC) are amongst the observers of the forum.

Tees Teesport Teesport is based on the River Tees and is currently the third largest port in the United Kingdom, and amongst the ten biggest in Western Europe. This port handles over 56 million tonnes of goods per annum which are mainly associated with the local petrochemical, chemical and steel processing industries. The port is important infrastructure for the NEPIC cluster of process companies.

Large-scale integrated chemical processing

The larger, and in a number of instances, integrated chemical producers in the NEPIC Cluster are based on Teesside on three large chemical sites around the mouth of the River Tees at Wilton, Billingham and Seal Sands that were formerly owned and operated by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). These locations have a long history of large scale chemical manufacturing even before the creation of ICI. The large scale manufacturing companies operating on these sites are sometimes called "commodity chemical manufacturers" and they make products such as petrochemicals, fertilizers and polymers.

Integrated Manufacturers Group