Baglan Bay ''( Welsh: Bae Baglan)'' is a part of the Swansea Bay coastline and a district of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales. Baglan Bay is also the name of a local government community. Baglan Bay is served by the

M4 Motorway The M4, originally the London-South Wales Motorway, is a motorway in the United Kingdom running from west London to southwest Wales. The English section to the Severn Bridge was constructed between 1961 and 1971; the Welsh element was largely ...

and the A48 road which traverse the northeastern edge of the area.

History

In the 19th century,

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead ...

tinplate Tinplate consists of sheets of steel coated with a thin layer of tin to impede rusting. Before the advent of cheap milled steel, the backing metal was wrought iron. While once more widely used, the primary use of tinplate now is the manufacture o ...

and pottery were exported from Baglan Pill. In 1963 BP (trading as British Hydrocarbon Chemicals, Ltd.) opened

petrochemical Petrochemicals (sometimes abbreviated as petchems) are the chemical products obtained from petroleum by refining. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable so ...

plants Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude ...

at Baglan Bay, partly to benefit from the proximity of the BP

Oil Refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefie ...

at Llandarcy, which could supply feedstocks. The plants produced 125,000 tons of petrochemicals during the first year of operation. The main products were

ethylene Ethylene ( IUPAC name: ethene) is a hydrocarbon which has the formula or . It is a colourless, flammable gas with a faint "sweet and musky" odour when pure. It is the simplest alkene (a hydrocarbon with carbon-carbon double bonds). Ethylene ...

(50-60,000 tons a year), ethylene dichloride (64,000 tons), propylene,

butadiene 1,3-Butadiene () is the organic compound with the formula (CH2=CH)2. It is a colorless gas that is easily condensed to a liquid. It is important industrially as a precursor to synthetic rubber. The molecule can be viewed as the union of two v ...

(5000 tons), and isobutylene. Several other companies built chemical plants at Baglan Bay. Forth Chemicals (a joint subsidiary of Monsanto and BHC), had a styrene monomer plant within the BHC site. The petrochemicals complex produced alcohols,

styrene Styrene () is an organic compound with the chemical formula C6H5CH=CH2. This derivative of benzene is a colorless oily liquid, although aged samples can appear yellowish. The compound evaporates easily and has a sweet smell, although high concen ...

, olefins, and

benzene Benzene is an organic chemical compound with the molecular formula C6H6. The benzene molecule is composed of six carbon atoms joined in a planar ring with one hydrogen atom attached to each. Because it contains only carbon and hydrogen atoms ...

from the mid-1960s, and

vinyl chloride monomer Vinyl chloride is an organochloride with the formula H2C=CHCl. It is also called vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) or chloroethene. This colorless compound is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride (PVC ...

and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from the early 1970s. By 1968, BP Baglan Bay was one of the largest petrochemical sites in Europe, employing 2500 workers at its peak in 1974. Other companies with plants at Baglan Bay included W. R. Grace (polybutenes) and Pfizer. However, market changes led to the gradual closure of the facility between 1994 and 2004. There were concerns about the incidence of cancer and mortality near the Baglan Bay petrochemical works.

Baglan Energy Park

Following the final closure of BP's Baglan Bay plant in 2004, the site was re-developed by BP, the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) and

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council is the local authority for the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, one of the 22 principal areas of Wales. The council was controlled by the Labour Party from its creation in 1996 until 2022, when Plai ...

. Baglan Bay power station, a 500 MW

combined cycle A combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy. On land, when used to make electricity the most common type is called a combined cycle gas turb ...

gas turbine power plant operated by GE Power Systems was built and the remainder of the land was earmarked for a business park, the Baglan Energy Park. Businesses locating at the park benefit from low cost electrical energy from the power station. Several plots are now developed with tenants or with speculative office and industrial premises available to let. A paper mill, Intertissue, part of the Italian

paper tissue Tissue paper or simply tissue is a lightweight paper or, light crêpe paper. Tissue can be made from recycled paper pulp on a paper machine. Tissue paper is very versatile, and different kinds of tissue are made to best serve these purposes, ...

manufacturing company Sofidel Group, was completed in September 2006. The Energy Park is also home to the Baglan Bay Innovation Center, the Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings (

SPECIFIC Specific may refer to: * Specificity (disambiguation) * Specific, a cure or therapy for a specific illness Law * Specific deterrence, focussed on an individual * Specific finding, intermediate verdict used by a jury in determining the final ...

) project, Hi-Lex Cable System Ltd, Remploy Ltd, Montagne Jeunesse, headquarters for Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, and headquarters for Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council's service response centre. New facilities are under construction for Shield Medicare Ltd (a subsidiary of US sanitation supply company Ecolab) and the University of Glamorgan’s Hydrogen research and demonstration centre. Developer TCN UK is planning to develop a . development called The Exchange which is expected to provide office space for 400 workers.

Awards

Baglan Energy Park won an award for best practice in regeneration at the British Urban Regeneration Association Awards (BURA) in December 2007, and the Local Government Chronicle and Health Service Journal Sustainable Communities regeneration award in February 2008.

Plans

A wholly owned BP company, Abernedd Power Ltd, proposed a further two natural gas-fired power stations with a total generation capacity of 870 MW of electricity. The scheme reached the planning stage. Construction was due to start in 2010 to meet a projected shortfall in power generation capacity in the UK and Wales within the next 4 to 6 years. However, a revised plan for a smaller power station of 450 MW was approved. SSE now own the project and have submitted a variation to the plans to enable them to build an open cycle gas turbine power station.

St. Modwen Properties St. Modwen Properties limited is a British-based property investment and development business specialising in the regeneration and remediation of brownfield land and urban environments. It is headquartered in Birmingham and has a network of four ...

acquired of BP-owned land in April 2009 with a view to developing the land for employment-led purposes.WalesOnline - St Modwen to transform BP site at Baglan Bay
/ref> Scottish and Southern Energy completed the acquisition of the Abernedd Power Company in May 200

Nearest places

* Jersey Marine, Jersey Marine Beach * Baglan Bay power station *

Crymlyn Burrows Crymlyn Burrows () is an area of land in Wales, UK to the east of Swansea city centre, and south of Crymlyn Bog. It is bounded by Jersey Marine Beach to the south and the River Neath to the east. The land west of Baldwin's Crescent falls with ...

Briton Ferry Briton Ferry ( cy, Llansawel) is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. The Welsh name may indicate that the church, ''llan'', is protected from the wind, ''awel''. Alternatively, ''Sawel'' may be a derivative ...

* Baglan * Sandfields

Notes

External links

Baglan Energy ParkBaglan Baywww.geograph.co.uk : photos of Baglan Bay and surrounding area
{{coord, 51, 36, 30, N, 3, 50, 30, W , region:GB , display=title Swansea Bay Communities in Neath Port Talbot