With the Woodsmith mine shut down, the job losses will have a huge impact on the Whitby community

The site of Britain’s largest mining development is buzzing with activity. Builders and engineers are working to sink twin shafts, both almost a mile deep, at the Woodsmith fertilizer project near the picturesque seaside town of Whitby.

Beneath the North York Moors National Park, another team is drilling a 37-mile tunnel that will connect Woodsmith to Teesside.

Woodsmith was heralded as a transformational project. The hope was that it could produce so much fertilizer that its economic value could amount to as much as 4 percent of Britain’s entire national income.

That’s not how it turned out. The bustle will end within months after the mine’s owner, Anglo American, promised to drastically cut back on investments. Locals believe the move is ‘a disaster’.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal the starting gun has been fired for massive job cuts at Woodsmith. Staff at a major contractor on site were told last week that more than 300 people would be made redundant by the end of the year, a source in Whitby said.

In total, as many as 80 percent of the site’s 1,400 contractors could be affected, the Mail revealed last month.

This is very unhelpful for the Tories, who are desperate to keep their seats in red-walled areas such as nearby Teesside, and for Rishi Sunak, whose constituency of Richmond in North Yorkshire – known as Richmond and Northallerton by the general election – is only a few kilometers away.

Woodsmith’s slowdown has alarmed the Tories as they defend marginal seats in the surrounding region at next month’s election.

Sir Simon Clarke, who defends Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, has called the delay a ‘very unwelcome surprise’.

And Jacob Young, Tory candidate for Redcar, who won his seat in 2019 and has a narrow majority of 3,500, urged Anglo American to reverse its decision. He said: ‘If contractors are demobilized and staff are dismissed, the project can never be restarted.’

Anglo American will make a public announcement on Woodsmith’s future later this month. However, the company told The Mail on Sunday that it would “progressively” halve its own workforce to 160 people over the next year.

The delay will bring development to a halt, putting the partially completed mine into hibernation. A skeleton staff will remain behind to help with basic maintenance.

The local economy is prepared for the shock of the loss of mining contractors’ business and the delay in creating permanent jobs at Woodsmith.

It brings back bad memories for many.

People here have seen other once-thriving industries, such as steel, disappear, leaving thousands with nowhere to go.

The unrest at Woodsmith is part of a strategy put in place last month by Anglo’s chief executive, Duncan Wanblad, to fend off a £39 billion takeover attempt by rival BHP.

Wanblad won – the deal was abandoned. Woodsmith, however, was collateral damage.

Anglo may not make a final decision on the mine’s future for a few years, but the omens are not good. It’s a huge setback for a project that started eight years ago with high hopes under its original developer, a now-defunct company called Sirius.

Such is the level of local concern that a taskforce will soon be set up by North Yorkshire County Council.

Others, including Teesside Mayor Ben Houchen, will be involved to help subcontractors find other work. Carl Les, leader of the Tory-controlled North Yorkshire County Council, said: ‘The one positive is that the Teesside area is quite prosperous at the moment and there is a lot of other work going on that could provide opportunities for those affected are due to the slow crisis. -down.’

The identified areas of the wider local economy that benefit from the mining contractors range from hoteliers and house rental companies to cafe owners, pubs and retailers.

He said the project has helped increase the local economy’s dependence on tourism. Anglo is looking for an investment partner – possibly in the form of another miner or a sovereign wealth fund – with which it can share the huge costs of the project. John Cook, chairman of the Yorkshire Coast Mineral Association, a collection of farmers who lease their land to the mine, said Woodsmith would be a “decent prospect” for a partner because its fertilizer reserves could be extracted for 100 years.

He said: “When Anglo American took over the mine there was local optimism. They are a large listed company and were seen as potentially safe hands.”

Cook was one of thousands of small investors who put their trust and their money into Sirius Minerals in 2015. He said: ‘Like a lot of people, I put a bit of money into it as a small investor. I felt an obligation to support something that could be so big for this area, I wanted to be part of that.”

He and an estimated 85,000 other individual investors, many of whom were local residents, lost thousands of pounds or even their life savings when Sirius’ share price collapsed. It was rescued by Anglo in a bargain £400 million deal.

The grand plans revealed by Sirius captured the imagination of a region devastated by the loss of thousands of steel jobs in neighboring Teesside.

The company had to build two 1,400 meter shafts to reach a 70 meter mineral seam, which would make this the deepest mine in Europe.

The polyhalite would then be transported 23 miles in a tunnel on a giant conveyor belt to the company’s processing plant in Teesside.

The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 2021, but the most recent estimates for completion – before the delay was announced – were 2027. The timeline is now unknown.

The scale of job losses will have a huge impact on Whitby.

Steve Swales, 50, owner of Sackys Cafe on the harbour, said: ‘I know guys who have left good jobs to work in the mines.

‘Now we hear that 80 percent could lose their jobs.

“Make no mistake, a major job loss at the mine will have a major impact on everything in this town.”

Frank Iddon, 66, is operations director of the Whitby Endeavour, a museum boat and restaurant dedicated to the legacy of explorer Captain James Cook.

“It’s another blow the area can do without, especially after the loss of all the steel jobs in Teesside,” he said.

Peter Donichey, 70, sold joke books to tourists at the docks but felt the situation at Woodsmith Mine was no laughing matter. He said: ‘I actually worked for Anglo American in a gold mine in South Africa in the 1980s. It was a huge operation and I know how much money that company is worth because I saw it firsthand.

Tom McCulley, CEO of Anglo American’s crop nutrients division, said: ‘We are carrying out a full review process of all workstreams to meet the new business plan.’

• Additional reporting by Kevin Donald and Francesca Washtell