Hallam MD Rob Pickersgill attended a Doncaster City Council Roundtable event on sustainable energy in manufacturing with presentations by Fhaheen Khan, Chief Economist at MAKE UK and Dr Pam Murrell, CEO of the UK Cast Metals Federation. Attendees included Ed Miliband MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero; Ros Jones, Mayor of Doncaster City Council and Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher. The event was hosted at the Ardagh Glass Group’s Doncaster complex.

Rob Comments “The discussions covered a wide range of issues highly relevant to the UK energy cost crisis including sustainable technology use and market pricing issues, the latter being extremely complex and another disastrous legacy of privatization. Long term contract prices for manufacturers include high risk premiums and inflated non-commodity costs, are the highest in Europe and 4 or 5 times higher than the prices that UK manufacturers’ competitors in China and even the USA are currently paying. The Government-commissioned REMA report (Review of Electricity Market Arrangements) doesn’t provide a solution to the pricing anomalies in the market, being focused on creating flexibility to accommodate sustainable power rather than alleviating domestic and industrial customer pain.”