The north east and Ukraine…
Date published:
Rachel Anderson’s latest column for the Journal.
The Chamber can occasionally get a bit too caught up in numbers, we deal with a lot of statistics, huge amounts of data and frankly most of it, whilst important, would send a glass eye to sleep. We’ve got data on employment, trade, imports, exports, construction, transport, housing. We even know how much wine the North East drinks each year – spoiler, it’s a lot.
Sometimes we think we are clever with statistics and have a handle on the impact of events. For example, when war broke out in Ukraine, we watched with horror and, as it’s our job, we looked how it might impact the North East economy. Our trade statistics said our direct imports and exports with Ukraine were relatively small. What our numbers don’t tell us is how the conflict and the hugely interconnected trade networks we are part of, mean that the conflict comes much closer to home than any of us realised.
We all watched on with emotion as the siege of the Mariupol steelworks raged, there’s not much left of it now. Different steelworks around the world specialise in shaping steel differently, our plants in the North East make pipes (Hartlepool), girders (Lackenby) and wire (Skinningrove). Let me tell you about Mariupol. It was a very efficient works and specialised in rolling metal sheets more than 20mm thick. Those sheets are primarily used in making heavy vehicles, earth movers, diggers etc. Those men holding out in Mariupol made the steel used in Birtley, Peterlee and Stockton.
We’ve also heard a lot about Ukraine’s agricultural capability especially wheat and sunflower oil. Commodities unable to leave Odessa won’t be arriving in Gosforth, Berwick or Middlesbrough where our pasties, pastry and pies relied on it. We didn’t pick this up initially because commodities such as wheat and oil are traded in third party markets and in Dollars which hides origins – it is only now we’re finding out how much we are really tied to Ukraine.
Thirdly, I’d invite you to look around the room you are in and see how much Ukrainian neon gas is around you. Yes, that’s right, unless you are reading this in a newspaper in one of the outside loos at Beamish, you’ll probably have some. Neon gas is a key component of semi-conductors in cars, mobile phones, computers, household appliances. Ukraine produced 75% of it – in plants in Mariupol.
Statistics they can tell what you want to know; but they don’t tell you even half the story.
Photo by Yehor Milohrodskyi on Unsplash