UNITED KINGDOM & IRELAND SPOTLIGHT
Northern Service Hub
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| Ford's $318-million investment in diesel engine production capacity expansion at its Dagenham complex came after stiff competition from other Ford engine plants worldwide, said Ford of Britain Chairman Roger Putnam in December 2004. "Presently, one third of all new cars sold in Europe are powered by a diesel engine and this figure is expected to reach around 50 per cent — approximately eight million units — by 2006," he said. The investment was backed by $8.5 million from DTI's Selective Finance for Investment in England program, as well as up to $24.8 million in training grants from the London Development Agency in partnership with the Learning & Skills Council. |
Glasgow is one of many cities worldwide to see recent investments from Dell: In this case, a 400-job customer sales and support center for Dell's medium and large business and public-sector customers. The center could employ as many as 850 people by 2008.
Sometimes those projects are interconnected: As it happens, one of the fast-growing success stories in Derry, Northern Ireland, is Dell service provider Stream, a contact center company that also operates a growing center in Dublin, Ireland.
In Derry, the company has recently grown its work force from 380 to 600, helped in part by Invest Northern Ireland's North West Action Plan, as well as its acquisition by Dallas-based ECE Holdings. Leslie Morrison, Invest Northern Ireland's chief executive, has indicated that out of a planned $113 million in assistance earmarked for the region by the action plan, more than half has already been committed, helping leverage more than $244 million in investment from companies such as Stream, DuPont, Northbrook Technology, Seagate Technology and Huco Lightronic.
Northern Ireland's claim to financial services and high-tech data center leadership has received multiple other recent endorsements too, with projects from Oracle, Microsoft and Citigroup.
