For the last Morning Bulletin of the Year, I thought it would be good to take a look at just some of the Chamber highlights of 2023.
In January the famous ABBA (Anywhere but b****y Aberdeen) P&J front page told the story of a series of blows to the region.
February saw the start of the Chamber bringing some UMF to the region’s events scene with Brendan Kane sprinkling some social media stardust. The first of a series that would being over 3,000 people to events as part of our city centre commitment.
Brendan Kane kicked-off a huge year of UMF
Our Union Street launched in March and in just nine short months the progress would be transformational. We marked the cards of SNP leadership hopefuls and wrote to the Chancellor asking for 5 things…including the relocation of DESNZ civil service jobs to Aberdeen, changes to EPL and Investment Zone status for the North-east.
In April the new First Minister asked us to arrange his visit to Aberdeen- just the second official engagement of his term. Northern Star supported by Brodies took centre stage with around 800 folk celebrating business success at P&J Live- what a do!
A fun night was had by all!
We went on the road in May with a tour of Gordon area members and a trip to the British Chambers Global conference in London where we secured a commitment from the honourable member for Holburn & St Pancras to visit Aberdeen to discuss energy policy… . The 6th edition of our Investment Tracker was launched telling a story of over £6.5bn of completed projects since 2017 and a future pipeline of around £16bn. And two of the major projects in it came to life with the first big cruise ship coming to South Harbour and the opening of BioHub. Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero & Just Transition Mairi McAllan was our guest at the Energy Transition 37 launch and heard first-hand about the damage Scottish Government’s energy stance was causing.
Our Union Street got hundreds of people in the room at the Music Hall in June for its first public meeting. Sir Howard Bernstein provided some inspiration for how our region should approach regeneration, Manchester style. The North-east was indeed given an Investment Zone and Treasury accepted the damage being done to jobs and investment by EPL by introducing (an albeit meaningless) price floor.
Our Union Street is just getting started...
The campaign for a new railway from Dyce to Ellon, Peterhead and Fraserburgh stayed on track with AECOM/Stantec awarded the feasibility study contract in July.
August saw the launch of the Chamber’s fantastic new website and Member Zone and a new Premier Partner -Centrica- came on board. Our revamped Quarterly Economic Survey (QES+) launched in a new partnership with Gilson Gray. Our lobbying paid off again with Acorn CCUS given track 2 status and new North Sea licences announced.
September saw Offshore Europe in town and we published a record-breaking special edition of Business Bulletin. Almost 500 people attended our launch breakfast and we rounded things off with a fringe event with Stork at Resident X. Our media coverage value for the year broke through the £10m barrier- the voice of business in the region.
Records were broken in October with 1,400 people packing the Music Hall to see our Sexy Millionaire Steven Bartlett at the final UMF event of 2023 and Northern Star entries totalled 230- the highest ever. Our Union Street had its first volunteer clean up. And Aberdeen & Aberdeenshire were voted best places to live in the UK in a 6,000 survey by Homeviews.com
Steven Bartlett engrossed the sell-out Music Hall
Six months to the day since we invited him, Sir Keir came to the Chamber in November with a number of his senior team and left with the knowledge that this region is the solution to their energy and climate policy challenges- not the problem. November also saw the publication of the 38th Energy Transition survey, saw our unique website visitor figure for the year hit an incredible 375,000- ney bad in a region of half a million. The employment law conference was the biggest and best yet, our trade documentation team helped customers with Russian steel sanction challenges and our intrepid fieldworkers hit the streets to carry out Christmas Village research.
Sir Keir finally made it north
And as we headed into December, our policy work continued to bear fruit with the announcement of more than 200 DESNZ civil service jobs being located in Aberdeen. We had a record number of new members joined during the year and our training programme had its best year for almost a decade.
Take a breath. What a year. That little run through was just the tip of the iceberg of the work done by our incredible team of 30 people supported by our Board and Policy Chamber. Thank you to all of them and to you, our members. Without your support we could not do the work we do. Creating connections, helping you do business better and creating the conditions for the future economic success of the region.
Have a brilliant festive break. We’ll do it all again…and more...in 2024.
