Plans have been unveiled to widen the use of Hull's biggest recent waterfront development.
The £310m Green Port Hull project transformed Alexandra Dock to pave the way for the Siemens Gamesa offshore wind turbine blade manufacturing facility which opened in December 2016.
As well as the factory itself, the site is used to assemble turbine components before they are shipped to wind farms in the North Sea.
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Construction work recently started on an expansion of the blade factory as part of a further £186m investment by Siemens Gamesa which is set to create 200 new jobs
Now the company has submitted a planning application to vary a condition of the original approval for the scheme to allow for a wider range of business uses.
If given the go-ahead, it would allow around 10 per cent of the site to be made available for additional uses involving new low carbon and renewable industries, temporary berths for marine vessels and general marine engineering activity.
The 7.5 hectare site earmarked for other uses is mainly reclaimed land created as part of the wider Green Port Hull development.
The idea would be to use it as a shipping hub for the delivery, storage, assembly and onward distribution of components to support low carbon and renewable projects using three outer berths.
However the operational needs of the blade factory would always take precedence, particularly in relation to shipping requirements in the berths.
Siemens Gamesa said it believes there is also scope for the site to act as a shipping hub for the delivery of materials for schemes linked to climate change mitigation, renewable energy and carbon neutral developments.
They would be similar to temporary consents granted last year to deliver and store rock armour sea defences for use in a coastal project at Withernsea and aggregate for use in the Dogger Bank onshore cabling project, which is currently underway between Ulrome on the coast and a site near Dunswell on the edge of Hull.
An environmental report prepared by Aecom Ltd as part of the new application says future opportunities could also include servicing offshore construction work such as new carbon capture and storage facilities in the North Sea.
The report said: "It is proposed that a proportion of the site be made available for a range of additional uses at times when and where such uses do not not conflict with the manufacturing, assembly and servicing of offshore wind turbines and their components.
"The employment of such areas to support the additional uses will generally be associated with periods when the pre-assembly areas of the site are ‘out-of-project’ , i.e. are not in use for assembling wind turbines for UK-based projects."
It concludes that allowing limited diversification of the port site would improve its commercial viability, complement the existing Siemens Gamesa operations there and accentuate its green credentials.
It added: "The diversification would be limited to approximately ten per cent of the site, but would provide a valuable infrastructure resource to support a wider supply chain, including for local and national renewable and decarbonisation projects."
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