Our region’s ports have successfully won a bid to become established as a collective Humber-wide freeport, and now for both the Greater Lincolnshire and Humber & East Yorkshire (HEY) LEPs, plans shift towards meeting priority sector targets in green energy, job creation and retention, and UK supply chain logistics.

As the Government’s plan to create 10 new freeports across the UK begins to unfold, the Humber’s success in securing freeport status has the potential to create new jobs, boost regional and wider economies, and further enhance Greater Lincolnshire and the Humber as key areas for community regeneration through the creation of highly skilled jobs and training schemes, alongside expansion in correlating technological and engineering sectors.  

The Humber currently accounts for 23% of all goods travelling through English ports, adding £7.6 billion GDA to the UK, and supports around 35,000 regional jobs. It is therefore vital to the country’s logistics sector that the ports of Goole, Grimsby, Hull, and Immingham continue to thrive. With freeport status, these four combined areas will be able to encourage more businesses to use the Humber as their dedicated logistics port for customs processing, with the incentives of paying reduced VAT, employment tax, discounted business rates, and a reduction in stamp duty. 

Alongside access to Humberside Airport, the A1, the East Coast Main Line and food clusters in the south, our ports and logistics sector accounts for over 25% of UK rail freight, connecting to the major energy and manufacturing providers in the north and offering significant opportunities as the UK gateway to the Midlands Engine and Northern Powerhouse.  

Now that the freeport bid has been approved, the Humber Freeport also aims to contribute to and establish new innovation throughout another of the Greater Lincolnshire LEP’s key priority sectors: decarbonisation and clean energy. The Humber estuary and surrounding coastline are already connected with at least 25% of the energy produced for the UK, and ultimately both the county and the country could potentially benefit further from utilising the area’s growing offshore wind farms to contribute to decarbonisation.

Click here to discover more about investment opportunities in this sector.