Here are the business stories making the business headlines locally and across the country this morning.
Energy bills lowest for two years under new price cap
Energy prices have now fallen to their lowest level for two years, but experts are urging people to stick to savings habits because bills remain expensive.
The annual bill for a household using a typical amount of gas and electricity has dropped by £238, to £1,690, under regulator Ofgem's latest price cap.
But energy saving tips, such as using songs to time four-minute showers, should be maintained, advisers say.
The fixed standing charge element of bills has risen from Monday.
British company hunts for white hydrogen in Cornwall and Scotland
A British company is prospecting for vast deposits of hydrogen buried in ancient rocks around the world including at potential sites in Cornwall, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Getech, a London-listed tech company, is collating data from across Britain and has pinpointed potential hydrogen-bearing rocks in parts of the British Isles too.
The deposits lie in a belt across Scotland stretching roughly from Greenock in the west to Aberdeen on the north east coast. There are others on Shetland, the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall and near Omagh in Northern Ireland.
Chris Jepps, chief operating officer of Getech, said: “This is an embryonic industry right now. So it’s too early to say much but it’s also very exciting. There’s some evidence it could be as big a market as oil and gas.”
Fast-growing Deep Casing Tools under new US ownership
Fast-growing north-east firm Deep Casing Tools (DCT) has changed hands and is now under US ownership.
Houston-based Drilling Tools International (DTI) acquired it for an undisclosed sum.
The deal is expected to deliver new jobs at DCT, which professional services giant Deloitte names as one of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies in 2023.
It means an exit for the EV Private Equity, which was previously DCT’s largest shareholder.
Car insurance premiums on the way down
The rapid rise in the cost of car insurance over the past two years appears to be over, with premiums slowly starting to fall.
The average fully comprehensive premium was £892 in February, according to the comparison site Compare the Market, up 46% on the same month last year but down from a peak of £951 in November.
The market researcher Consumer Intelligence also found price increases in car insurance premiums had flattened out. Premiums for new customers rose by 59.7% between February last year and December, but have fallen slightly since.
Ian Hughes, chief executive of Consumer Intelligence, said there were signs that the rise in the cost of car parts, repairs and second-hand cars, which had driven up premiums, had eased.