Former Steelworks Site in Redcar

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Simon Clarke

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Goodwill]

Boulby has been losing staff over the past few years and its production is being scaled down. It is already approaching the end of the muriate of potash seam—the potassium chloride seam—and is now in the lower seam of polyhalite, which is what the Woodsmith mine will produce. All mines have a natural life.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

There is no question but that Boulby has gone through a profound and difficult transition over the past year, with approximately 90 compulsory redundancies, but the owners would certainly want me to emphasise that they are still looking at a long-term future at Boulby. There may well be a transfer of staff between the two mines, but as far as I am aware, Boulby is not under any threat of closure or loss.

[Mr Goodwill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but the scale of operation at Boulby has reduced because of the switch from potassium chloride, which requires a lot of processing on the site. Polyhalite is a material that can be used straight away without any additional processing, so it qualifies as an organic fertiliser and many producers of organic food can capitalise on it. Indeed, one of the great things about Boulby’s mining polyhalite is that we can now start to develop markets for it around the world as it becomes available. Otherwise, we would not have had a new fertiliser product that is available for field trials, developing countries and big agricultural economies around the world, and that can be sourced from my constituency and exported to the world through that great facility, the deep-water port on the Tees.