The Teesside Freeport, is the UK’s largest tariff free customs zone offering many advantages to businesses, including a package of tax relief to help drive jobs, investment and growth, streamlined planning processes and simplified customs procedures. The site consists of 4500 acres with over £200 million invested already invested and £393 million to be invested in the next 12 months to the end of 2024.
The Freeport and surrounding area, that was once the home of the world’s largest steel manufacturer, is already welcoming many tenants, including SeAH Wind Ltd’s monopile manufacturing facility for the offshore sector (a project SPEL has provided a large number of Puraceptor Full Retention Separators to), with the site also earmarked for the groundbreaking carbon capture power plant project Net Zero Teesside, being delivered by bp and Equinor’s and Circular Fuels’ renewable energy from waste plant.
A new link road was required to open up a further 500-acres at Teesworks. This link road has been described as ‘vital’ by Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen because it allows access to further development land (including the area that the new SeAH Wind Monopile Factory is being built on) and opened another access point into the UK’s first and largest freeport.

SPEL first helped specify and then manufactured two Smartceptor Hydrodynamic Vortex separators for this project. SPEL provided a SPEL Smartceptor SHV400/140 (treating 140l/s with a connectable area of up to 18,666m2) and a SPEL Smartceptor SHV500/255 (treating 255l/s with a connectable area of up to 34,000m2). The SPEL Smartceptor treats surface water to a ‘low’ Pollution Hazard level in line with the CIRIA SuDS Manual C753 with a mitigation indices of 0.5 for TSS, 0.4 for Metals and 0.5 for Hydrocarbons. Hydrodynamic Vortex Separators are often used on highways and on low risk pollution sites this can be ok, however the removal performance and storage capacity of Hydrodynamic Vortex Separators may not provide high enough for many highly trafficked locations, and where BS EN 858 compliance is required, other systems, such as the SPEL ESR Stormceptor or SPEL ESR Puraceptor may be better suited to the application.