Nissan ripple effect brings some hope to football-mad northeast

LONDON EDITOR:EVEN RESERVE derbies between Newcastle and Sunderland, the northeast of England's biggest football rivalry, in the ground formerly known as St James's Park attract crowds.

Last Thursday week, Newcastle fans tore up banners advertising its new title – the Sports Direct Arena – and threw them on to fans in front and the pitch below.

The referee had to call a temporary halt in proceedings.

Later that evening, fans attacked a Sports Direct store in Eldon Square to vent their fury.

On Wednesday, local fan Michael Atkinson was ordered to pay £100 compensation after he spray-painted “St James’s Park” on the wall of the city-centre ground.

Now banned from the club, Atkinson, an unemployed barman, has not been forgotten by fellow fans who have offered to help him pay the fine.

The club’s owner Mike Ashley has named the ground after his sports clothing and footwear company until he can find a corporate sponsor prepared to pay millions for the naming rights.

For locals, Ashley’s move is sacrilege. Deeply disliked, few give him any thanks for Newcastle’s improving finances – now down to a £3.9 million loss last year, helped by a £140 million loan from the businessman.

On a chilly Saturday night in March, Newcastle is not a place for the weak since shirtless young men and scantily-clad women moving between bars seem impervious to the cold.

Football is spoken about often, but even over pints locals chat about jobs – pointing in hope to Nissan’s decision in Sunderland to create 2,000 new jobs.

For nearly two centuries, the northeast of England was a manufacturing power-house before old ways and foreign competition brought a proud people low.

British politicians, bitten by predictions in the past that came back to haunt them, are fearful of ever talking about the appearance of green shoots in the economy.

However, in the northeast, there may just be some tentative signs of recovery and not just with Nissan – a company that arrived during the Thatcher years.

The so-called “Nissan effect” has led to a growth in the numbers employed in firms supplying the Japanese giant, with the Sunderland plant regarded as one of its most efficient operations globally.

Meanwhile, its presence helped to encourage Hitachi’s decision last year to build a factory to build new trains in Durham, employing 500 highly skilled workers.

The Japanese firm insists that it will go ahead with the Newton Aycliffe factory despite delays in the signature of a contract to build a new fleet of trains for the Great Western line.

Figures from revenue and customs show that local exports grew by the fastest amount to date during the final three months of last year, bringing the total for the year to a record £13.5 billion.

Elsewhere, statistics suggest that a quarter of firms in the north of England as a whole are offering apprenticeships – eight percentage points higher than the UK-wide average.

Half of all UK engineering apprentices in the UK over 25 are now employed by firms in the region, even if concern exists that older apprentices are being exploited.

Up to 1,200 local firms are now exporting – South Africa has become a recent favourite, while sales to Australia have tripled since the Emirates airline opened a direct connection to Dubai.

In the past, local business people point out that the region was dominated by a few large firms which provided work, but which often snuffed out the chances of smaller rivals. Today, they have been replaced by a web of smaller, more nimble replacements.

Even local shipyards, which turned to building oil platforms after demand for vessels went quiet, see hope. The Hadrian Yard in Wallsend is to invest £50 million to build foundations for offshore wind farms 24/7, employing 600 workers.

Nineteen local firms, which already employ 6,000 people in the region on the back of £400 million worth of investment, have come together to form Energi Coast to promote the northeast as a global hub for renewable energy hardware.

However, much remains to be done. Nearly 30 per cent of people in the northeast once worked for the public sector, where jobs are being lost because of the austerity cutbacks being imposed by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne. Youth unemployment is a curse.

Once the preserve of skilled workers, unemployment queues in the region are now just as likely to be filled by former senior ranking managers and officials in a plethora of official bodies that have taken a knife to their operations.

However, the positive signals detected by some will come as little comfort to the 450 staff of the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, who were told on Wednesday that its plant in Fawdon in Newcastle is to close in two years.

Just three years ago, workers celebrated the opening of a new extension, believing the investment secured their futures. Now, the closure is blamed on the ever-increasing use of generic drugs by European Union health authorities, seeking to save where they can.