Forth Green Freeport

The Forth Green Freeport spans a 45 kilometre wide site in the Forth Estuary. This encompasses Edinburgh, Falkirk, and Fife and includes a range of development and investment opportunities.

Forth Green Freeport offers a range of incentives relating to customs, tax, planning, infrastructure, and innovation. See further details on the benefits of Freeports.

The Green Freeport’s proposed tax sites total around 600 hectares of land and are located at:

• Grangemouth – Scotland’s main container port and petrochemical complex. The port handles 9 million tonnes of cargo each, represents as much as 30% of Scotland’s gross domestic product and is a growing logistics hub.
• Leith – Ideally situated to support the offshore renewables industry, due to its central location for projects within the northern North Sea.
• Burntisland – Working with Leith, the port is an ideal location floating offshore wind – the next generation of offshore wind in deeper seas.
• Rosyth - Home to one of the largest waterside manufacturing and ship repair facilities in the UK, as well as Scotland’s premier Agri-hub.

Sector and market opportunity

Forth Green Freeport will allow the nation to be at the forefront of the developing offshore wind and alternative fuels sectors. It will create Scotland’s largest offshore wind marshalling, integration and manufacturing hub.

The Green Freeport will also accelerate Scotland’s expertise in shipbuilding and capitalise on the existing collaboration between industry and academia, delivering progress in advanced manufacturing and automation.

Investments will stimulate growth in trade, providing expanded logistics and trade capacity for existing and emerging industries. This includes advanced modular systems, biofuels, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage. Along with additional research and development (R&D) support and green incubator space , this will foster SME and startup growth.

Growth prospects

Companies can take advantage of the UK’s ambition to deploy up to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, including 5GW from floating offshore wind, and collaborate with a world leader in renewable energy.

With the potential to create 50,000 new, high-quality jobs in diverse sectors, Forth Green Freeport activities revolve around key areas like renewables, advanced manufacturing, carbon capture utilisation and storage, shipbuilding and logistics.

The Green Freeport also has the potential to unlock £6 billion in private and public investments for Scotland and to create new training facilities, logistic parks, rail networks and freight terminals.

Location

Located in the East of Scotland, Forth Green Freeport is perfectly placed to offer instant and efficient connectivity. This makes it well-suited for trading, importing and exporting.

The Grangemouth tax site is home to Scotland’s largest container terminal and reefer facility handling over 250,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) each year. The port works with all major deep sea shipping lines, as well as European short sea, multimodal and tanker operators.

Forth Ports Rosyth has the ideal layout, both on and offshore, to provide logistic solutions within the renewables sector. The port already has a successful track record in this area, including the import of large steel pipes for the fabrication of jackets and turbine blades for onshore wind farms.

Queensferry One, located Rosyth is a 120-acre development site with design and build opportunities from 10,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet. The site is anticipated to become the largest international industrial and logistics hub in the Central Belt of Scotland.

The Port of Leith is home to Scotland’s largest offshore wind renewables hub, which is undergoing an initial £50 million infrastructure upgrade and will be operational in 2024. The hub will provide a bespoke offshore wind berth and a 175-acre land bank for laydown, marshalling and manufacture of offshore wind farm components.

With significant infrastructure enhancements, the Port of Burntisland offers an ideal location to support the roll-out of floating offshore wind (FLOW) in Scotland’s deeper seas. Utilising a strong heavy engineering cluster, the port is set to become a dedicated marshalling and integration terminal for FLOW.

Connectivity

The Forth Green Freeport area encompasses a number of significant ports. Grangemouth services a diverse customer base, connecting Scotland to global deep sea markets. Both Leith and Rosyth service North Sea shipping activities, alongside excellent strategic rail and road connections.

The region also has convenient motorway access to Stirling, Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as northern England.

Edinburgh Airport offers direct flights between Edinburgh and over 150 airports worldwide. The airport is also well-connected by rail, with trains offering swift journeys to destinations including Glasgow (42 minutes) and London (4 hours 20 minutes).

Local talent and skills

In 2020/21 there were more than 20,000 students and 6,000 graduates in STEM subjects related to renewable energy studying in the area.

The Green Freeport will offer a Skills Accelerator Fund focused on skills development for young people and harder to reach communities.

National government support

As specially designed areas with beneficial economic regulations, Freeports can help you achieve sustained growth, and may be able to save you time and money through:

Tax reliefs

• Land and Building Transactions Tax relief
• enhanced Capital Allowances for investment in plant & machinery and structures & buildings
• five years of Non-Domestic Rates relief
• employer National Insurance contributions relief

Customs and planning

• simplified customs procedure
• deferrals and exemptions from duty payments
• VAT suspension within customs sites
• supportive local planning environments with constructive public-private partnerships

Innovation offer

• extensive public investment in skills and infrastructure
• access to the Freeport Regulation Engagement Network (FREN), enabling direct and early engagement between businesses, Freeports, and regulators
• access to the Freeport Innovation Network (FIN), a collaboration vehicle for Freeports to shape and organise their innovation activity as a collective