Uncertainty at pipeworks amid plea for work

A PIPE work company that last year set up a multimillion-pound factory in Hartlepool has urged a key potential customer to keep work in the UK, amid uncertainty about the site’s future.

- By TOM KEIGHLEY

Wasco Energy, which set up a pipe coating facility in the town last year and now employs about 100 people, was responding to concern that a target contract for the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) carbon capture and storage project could go to competitors overseas.

The firm has already shed some jobs and is operating a skeleton staff at the pipe works factory it set up in 2024 as part of a planned slowdown as it nears completion of a concrete coating contract. It had hoped to secure work on the NEP project, which includes the huge onshore and offshore infrastructure needed to transport CO2 from industrial sites on Teesside and the Humber to a storage location under the North Sea.