The owner of Liberty Smelter has confirmed ground works for its £120 million car parts factory will get under way in January – paving the way for massive jobs boost in the north.
A contract to prepare the ground for an alloy factory on Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance Liberty Smelter land at Fort William has now been tendered and secured.
It is understood work will get under way soon into the new year, with a spokesman confirming the factory is on schedule for a 2020 opening.Liberty unveiled its plans for the car wheel plant after it bought Fort William’s aluminium smelter from Rio Tinto in 2016.
Almost 700 local jobs would be created – 400 at the alloy wheels factory and another 279 through the supply chain.
Entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta took over the plant with the promise of a £1million boost to the local economy.
Mr Gupta proposes increasing the use of the estate land that the smelter sits on, and has already lodged planning applications for a 39-turbine windfarms at Glenshero and increased the production at the hydro plant in Kinlochleven.
It is hoped that up to 400 jobs will be secured within the alloy wheels industry based on the site, with many more created in the supply chain.
With the senior team in place for the business, and the order books open for alloy production, a spokesman for Liberty Smelter said: “I’m advised that there will be a lot of ground activity on the smelter site in January in preparation for the building of the planned wheels factory.
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“We’ve just awarded the contract for that work specialists will be drilling bore holes and gathering data on ground conditions as part of the requirement of the planning permission, and then preparing the site for construction.
“We’re still undertaking the evaluation to establish the targeted size of the factory and will make final decision on that during the first half of 2019.
“We’ve shortlisted prospective suppliers of machinery and equipment for the new factory and expect to make our selection over the next few months.
“The smelter itself has been doing well during 2018 as the market price for aluminium has been high and we’re optimistic going into 2019.
“During 2018 we invested £1.5million in a new piece of equipment at the smelter called a treatment aluminium crucible (TAC) which has further improved the quality of aluminium produced at Fort William and this has been well received by customers.”
He said discussions are ongoing with car manufacturers to determine when wheels from Lochaber will be required, which he said would help finalise the schedule of works.
The spokesman added: “Projects like this take time, but there has been progress.
“Our consultants, including environmental experts, are helping us to meet the range of conditions associated with its planning permission for the project and have been compiling specialist reports on issues such as transport, drainage, soil quality, archaeology, construction methods and environmental mitigation which are all required by the planning consent.”