About Saltend Chemicals Park
Owned and operated by px Group since 2018, Saltend Chemicals Park lies at the heart of the UK’s Energy Estuary in the Humber and is home to a cluster of world-class chemicals and renewable energy businesses such as INEOS, Mitsubishi Chemicals, and Vivergo Fuels. Partners at the site benefit from cost-effective shared infrastructure and services along with direct access to the Humber River via a deepwater jetty.
Collectively the on-site manufacturers produce almost 2 million tonnes of chemicals every year used in everyday products ranging from paints, clothing, pharmaceuticals. Many of the site partners are interconnected and integrated with each other for vital feedstocks and products. Since its formation as a multi-user chemical park, key tenants have invested around £600m in infrastructure with further investment expected from tenants and new site partners.
A key UK location for industrial decarbonisation, Saltend is set to host the flagship project of the Zero Carbon Humber scheme, which aims to be the world’s first Net Zero industrial cluster by 2040. The flagship project, Hydrogen to Humber Saltend (H2H Saltend), will convert natural gas into Hydrogen using an AutoThermal Reformer (ATR), and will use Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to capture the CO2 for storage offshore. The hydrogen plant will integrate into existing Saltend infrastructure, utility distribution networks and the existing industrial processes and will enable the on-site CHP plant to fuel switch from natural gas to hydrogen and industrial customers in the park to fully switch over to blue hydrogen feedstock.
A significant number of energy transition projects are in development at the 370-acre site including Pensana Rare Earths, the first rare earths processing facility – critical to the electric vehicle and wind turbine industries – in the UK. Recently, two further investments have been announced. FutureBiogas announced an investment worth tens of millions of pounds at Saltend for CO2 storage tanks – a key component of the CCS process, and Meld Energy is planning to build a £180mn Green Hydrogen facility.
Saltend Chemicals Park News
£180mn Green Hydrogen facility set for Saltend
Saltend Chemicals Park has been selected as the site for the build of a Green Hydrogen facility and an investment of between £180mn and £240mn by Meld Energy, the green hydrogen industrial developer.
Meld is currently bidding for development support from the UK’s Net Zero Hydrogen Fund. Should the bid win government backing, FEED (Front End Engineering Design) is expected to begin in November 2023 and would run concurrently with planning application processes. Building would commence less than a year later with a target operation in early 2027.
The facility would be the UK’s largest green hydrogen production facility (if built today), with an initial installed capacity of 100MW and the potential to increase its capacity to over 200MW in a second development stage.
Saltend Chemicals Park secures another site partner as part of Humberside’s CCS
In an investment worth tens of millions of pounds, 32 storage tanks will be constructed at Saltend by Future Biogas Ltd for the temporary storage of liquid CO2.
Future Biogas’s carbon negative process uses energy crops from a regenerative farming system as feedstock for its Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plants. Biomethane produced from the AD plant is then fed into the National Gas Grid and the byproduct (carbon neutral CO2) will be transported to Saltend for short term storage and shipping to Norway’s ‘Northern Lights’ project for permanent CO2 storage under the North Sea.
Saltend confirmed as site for world-leading clean hydrogen plant
Saltend Chemicals Park was confirmed by Equinor as the location that will host the flagship project of the Zero Carbon Humber initiative. The flagship project is Hydrogen to Humber Saltend (H2H Saltend), a world-scale Clean Hydrogen Plant that will produce hydrogen from natural gas in combination with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Initially the plant will allow industrial customers in the Saltend Chemicals Park to switch over to hydrogen fuelled energy and will reduce the amount of fossil fuels going into the Park’s gas-fired power plant, thus cutting emissions by nearly 900,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Pensana PLC Receives Planning Permission for Rare Earth Separation Facility at Saltend
Pensana PLC has been granted planning permission to establish one of the world’s first sustainable rare earth separation facilities, at px Group’s Saltend Chemicals Park, located in the UK’s ‘Energy Estuary’, in Hull.
The $125mn facility will produce materials that are critical to electric car and wind turbine production – both vital components of the decarbonisation of the region and the UK as a whole, as well as the wider Energy Transition.
The planning application was submitted in January and was granted in mid-April – a rapid turnaround for a project of this size and a key ‘pull factor’ for would-be investors.
About px Group
px Group is an award-winning, fully integrated infrastructure solutions business delivering innovative management services for high hazard and highly regulated environments. Responsible for safely delivering more than 30% of the UK’s gas supply, it operates and manages some of the UK’s most important energy assets, including Saltend Chemicals Park, St Fergus Gas Terminal and the Teesside Gas Processing Plant.
Headquartered in Stockton-on-Tees, and with offices in Aberdeen and the Humber, px Group has over 25 years’ experience in delivering end-to-end specialist services across all its service lines: Operations & Maintenance, Energy Management Services, Projects, Engineering & Consultancy, Due Diligence and Digital Solutions.
px Group is committed to the Energy and Industrial Transition, and reducing emissions across all its operations, including the sites it manages and operates on behalf of its clients. The company’s dedicated Energy Transition team is engrained across all its client partnerships and service lines.
px Group is backed by Ara Partners, a private equity company that specialises in investing in businesses, technology, and assets that have the ability or potential to cut carbon emissions in the industrial sectors significantly.
Our People
Patrick Pogue, Group Director Growth & Innovation
Patrick is Group Director Growth & Innovation at px Group and sits on the board of NOF, one of the UK’s leading business development organisations for the energy sector.
Patrick played a key role in px Group’s acquisition of Saltend Chemicals Park in 2018 and has been instrumental in the growth of the Park – and the company – ever since.
Geoff Holmes, CEO
Geoff joined as CEO of px Group in July 2019, having previously been Chief Operating Officer of INEOS Upstream services. Geoff has also held senior positions at Chevron, KCA Deutag, and Talisman.
Geoff’s overall responsibility lies in ensuring px Group is effectively, efficiently, and sustainably managing the wide range of strategic UK and European energy assets that the company operates on behalf of its clients and partners, as well as Saltend Chemicals Park, which px Group owns having purchased it from BP in 2018.
Geoff has quickly become the driving force behind px Group’s owner-operator approach it applies to the assets it manages – an approach that ensures the company and its staff adopt an owner’s mindset when running its sites, setting the company apart from competitors in the sector.
Under Geoff’s leadership, px Group was recently ranked as the 53rd fastest-growing business in Britain by The Sunday Times Profit Track, with profits growing by 33% in the last year alone.