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Freddy Shepherd hopes to bring shipyards back to life as wind turbine factories
Published: 2010-04-13 09:38:24
Freddy Shepherd, the controversial former owner of Newcastle United Football Club, could be about to make another fortune if Tyneside becomes the manufacturing centre of the coming boom in offshore wind farms.
(Sourced from the Times.)
Thousands of turbines are set to be erected in the North Sea as Britain gears up to become the global leader of the offshore wind industry, generating up to quarter of the nation’s electricity supply.
As their football club prepares for life back in the Premiership, business folk in Newcastle are hoping that the sun is also rising over the North East as a hub for this green industry.
And if Tyneside is to become a renewables Klondike overflowing with government investment, Mr Shepherd could be sitting on a goldmine.
He is best known as the co-owner of Newcastle United until 2007 — a period during which he called the women of Tyneside “dogs”, boasted of “ripping off” fans who buy replica shirts, and described himself as “the man who shot Bambi” by firing the late Sir Bobby Robson as manager.
However, he is rich, too, as the third-generation head of the family firm Shepherd Offshore, once a scrap metal merchant and now an engineering services company, which he runs with his younger brother, Bruce.
And his boat could be about to come in again. Over the past three decades Shepherd Offshore has been buying up derelict former shipyard property. It now controls 190 acres along a mile of Tyne riverfront running from the company’s headquarters in the east end of the city to the old Swan Hunter yard.
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