Hartlepool College Of Further Education News

Tata Steel today inaugurated its new £2 million offshore processing centre (OPC) at an event in Hartlepool attended by more than 40 leading business figures from the European renewable energy sector. Following a presentation at Hartlepool College of Further Education, guests were shown round the company’s new centre, a high-productivity processing facility that will produce welded tubular assemblies to be used in the fabrication of jacket foundations for offshore wind turbines. They also visited Tata Steel’s 42-inch tube mill, one of three tube mills located at the company’s Hartlepool site.

A student project which has led to significant safety improvements at North East-based Teesport has won Daniel McDougal, an engineering apprentice at PD Ports, runner-up prize in the Skills Showcase 2009 event. For the project, part of a four-year course for the Higher National Certificate in Engineering, Daniel designed a mechanical grab trailer to make it safer to fix the grabs to cranes on the dock, at Teesport. The grabs are attached to the Port’s Gottwald cranes and are used for discharging up to 30 bulk cargo vessels in a year at Teesport and Hartlepool docks.