Business is booming at Eastern Gateway, the industrial and logistics park built on the former sugar beet site at Sproughton, on the Western outskirts of Ipswich. A bold move from former leader David Ellesmere saw Ipswich Borough Council buy about 120 acres of land, though over half of this will be managed as a new Sproughton Nature Reserve.
From the start, there was a focus on employment and the plots already sold or under contract will have created more than 900 jobs. This is great news for growing the Ipswich economy.
Outline planning consent was secured for over 1,000,000 square feet (sq ft) for General Industrial, Storage and Distribution usage.
The site has been named Eastern Gateway and is one of the largest development opportunities in East Anglia. It has a great geographical location near the junction of the A12 and A14 and has Enterprise Zone status. This means the businesses which move onto the sites will benefit from business rate discounts, simplified planning, access to superfast broadband and potentially receive tax relief worth millions of pounds.
It’s convenient for local ports: 6 miles to Ipswich Port, 17 miles to Felixstowe Port and 30 miles to Harwich Port. Crucially, it is on the right side of the Orwell Bridge, so bridge closures will be less of a problem.
You will remember the large silos that dominated the sugar beet factory. They were demolished and the rubble has been reused as hard core for foundations and roads, around the site.
The site has been built out in stages, with road and utility infrastructure put in place gradually to create a steady stream of land parcels for development. Existing occupiers include a 265,000 sq ft national distribution unit for LDH (La Doria) Ltd, a leading own label supplier to supermarkets, and a 100,000 sq ft delivery station for Amazon.
Another two-acre plot is under contract, and we have serious interest in a further two plots of a similar size and hope to have these under offer shortly.
The latest customer to come on site is Trebor. This is not the company that makes mint sweets! Trebor Developments design, deliver and sell or lease accommodation for businesses.
Trebor has an eight-acre site and is working on an industrial and logistics scheme of five units ranging from 12,905 to 52,350 sq ft. They are targeting completion in Spring 2024. When finished the scheme is expected to create approximately 250-350 jobs for Ipswich and the surrounding area.
Trebor do not have tenants or buyers lined up for these five units. They are showing faith in the Ipswich economy as they believe they can lease or sell the units when they are completed. It is great to see this confidence for investing in Ipswich.
Still to come are a new roundabout and cycle path, due early next year. A second access road will open the last part of the site, which will enable the final plot, of twenty acres, to be put up for sale next year.
Eastern Gateway has been a sound investment for Ipswich Borough Council. We have had a clear strategy for the site. We invested heavily in demolishing old buildings – including the iconic silos that dominated the skyline for so long – cleaning up contaminated land and building new infrastructure such as roads and drainage.
Labour’s first mission in government will be to secure the highest sustained growth in the developed world – with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off.
Labour in Ipswich have made a great start on this mission.