The FDI angle

• Schneider Electric invests £42m in a new Scarborough facility, creating 200 jobs.
• Expansion targets UK's growing electrification, driven by data centres and EV charging infrastructure.

Why it matters: This investment is part of Schneider Electric's global expansion as demand surges for its products and services for electrification and digitisation.

France’s Schneider Electric is investing £42m in Scarborough, northern England, to build a new manufacturing plant for equipment used in electricity networks and data centres amid higher demand from newly built infrastructure to support electrification and digitisation.

The industrial group, headquartered in the Paris suburb of Rueil-Malmaison, will build its new facility in the Scarborough Business Park to produce large low-voltage switchgear, which is equipment used by utilities and larger companies to control and protect their power systems.

Schneider Electric will create 200 new jobs at its new site in Scarborough and relocate from its existing facility in the resort town on England’s North Sea coast, where the company has been present since 1961. The multinational already employs about 450 people in Scarborough and a total of 5000 across the UK and Ireland.

Kelly Becker, president of Schneider Electric in the UK, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, tells fDi that there is an “immense opportunity” in the UK for the company to produce electrical equipment for large entities. The new Scarborough facility follows the company’s £7.2m investment to expand its operations in Leeds, announced in October 2023.

“As the world moves more towards electrification and a little bit less oil and gas, we’re seeing huge growing opportunities,” says Ms Becker, who adds that the UK’s increasing number of data centres and electric vehicle (EV) chargers means there is more electrification and need for their equipment. 

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC'S EXPANSION IN SCARBOROUGH

• Company: Schneider Electric, France
• Location: Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK
• Facility production: Low-voltage switchgear used in electricity networks
• Investment: £42m
• New jobs created: 250
• Group's global capex plan (2024-2027): €2bn

Electrification boom

Schneider Electric has grown rapidly in recent years through acquisitions and greenfield investments across its electrification, automation and digitisation business lines. Its services and products have become more sought after as organisations electrify, invest more in digital services and aim to boost their energy efficiency. 

In March, Schneider Electric announced plans to invest $140m in its US manufacturing operations in 2024. The company expects to spend around €2bn on capital expenditure between 2024 and 2027, which includes additional capacity, their net zero strategy and boosting resilience. 

Their expansion in Scarborough comes as welcome news to the new Labour government, which has vowed to increase sluggish investment and economic growth since its landslide election victory in July 2024. 

“We're seeing good signs from the Labour government of what they intend to do. They're certainly talking about decarbonisation and net zero, which in the last 18 months had been a little bit different as we went through a political cycle,” says Ms Becker.  

Alongside availability of sufficient power, “the UK has the aspiration right now, politically and from big businesses, to drive growth”, which positions it well to benefit from expanding markets like data centres, she adds. This is shown by greater investment into data centres in Manchester, outside of the traditional hotspots of London and the south-east of England, says Ms Becker.

The Scarborough plant, which is expected to open in early 2025, aims to be net zero and is expected to source 30% of its energy from solar panels on its roof and will have 30 EV chargers on site. Stephen Phipson, CEO of Make UK, a manufacturers association, said that “green technologies are going to be the solution to many of the challenges that we face” and lauded Schneider’s new facility as a model that other manufacturers could follow.  

“This new manufacturing facility will drive new, quality jobs in Scarborough and help us go beyond net zero to become England’s first carbon negative region,” said David Skaith, mayor of York and North Yorkshire combined authority, in a statement. The region aims to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2034 and become carbon negative by 2040. 

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