Ian Lavery – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Lavery on 2015-11-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what support UKTI has provided to Rio Tinto in locations where Rio Tinto invests or plans to invest.

Anna Soubry

UK Trade and Investment’s (UKTI) mining sector team has regular and ongoing engagement with Rio Tinto both in market and in the UK as we seek to realise economic benefit for the UK through the involvement of the UK’s mining supply chain in Rio Tinto’s projects.

Rio Tinto closed its Lynemouth Aluminium facility in 2013. That same year UKTI was part of a Rapid Response taskforce (which included local Economic Development organisations and Rio Tinto), to explore redeployment and site re-marketing options.

UKTI support included:

– an audit of the unique characteristics and selling points of the site to determine the sectoral focus of Rio Tinto’s site marketing activity to potential investors.

– research to assess from where the strongest investor interest was likely to come from.