Baglan Bay ''( Welsh: Bae Baglan)'' is a part of the

Swansea Bay Swansea Bay ( cy, Bae Abertawe) is a bay on the southern coast of Wales. The River Neath, River Tawe, River Afan, River Kenfig and Clyne River flow into the bay. Swansea Bay and the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel experience a large tid ...

coastline and a district of

Neath Port Talbot Neath Port Talbot ( cy, Castell-nedd Port Talbot) is a county borough in the south-west of Wales. Its principal towns are Neath, Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Pontardawe. The county borough borders Bridgend County Borough and Rhondda Cynon Taf ...

county borough,

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. Baglan Bay is also the name of a local government community. Baglan Bay is served by the M4 Motorway and the

A48 road The A48 is a trunk road in Great Britain running from the A40 at Highnam, west of Gloucester, England, to the A40 at Carmarthen, Wales. Before the Severn Bridge opened on 8 September 1966, it was a major route between England and South ...

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 ...

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 ...

and

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

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, lique ...

Llandarcy Llandarcy is a village near Neath in the Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales, and was the site of the first oil refinery in the United Kingdom. It was originally designed as a garden village to house the workers for the BP refinery built b ...

, which could supply feedstocks. The plants produced 125,000 tons of petrochemicals during the first year of operation. The main products were ethylene (50-60,000 tons a year),

ethylene dichloride The chemical compound 1,2-dichloroethane, commonly known as ethylene dichloride (EDC), is a chlorinated hydrocarbon. It is a colourless liquid with a chloroform-like odour. The most common use of 1,2-dichloroethane is in the production of vinyl ...

(64,000 tons),

propylene Propylene, also known as propene, is an unsaturated organic compound with the chemical formula CH3CH=CH2. It has one double bond, and is the second simplest member of the alkene class of hydrocarbons. It is a colorless gas with a faint petro ...

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 vi ...

(5000 tons), and

isobutylene Isobutylene (or 2-methylpropene) is a hydrocarbon with the chemical formula . It is a four-carbon branched alkene (olefin), one of the four isomers of butylene. It is a colorless flammable gas, and is of considerable industrial value. Producti ...

. Several other companies built chemical plants at Baglan Bay. Forth Chemicals (a joint subsidiary of

Monsanto The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in ...

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 Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, employing 2500 workers at its peak in 1974. Other companies with plants at Baglan Bay included W. R. Grace (polybutenes) and Pfizer. However,

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

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 Welsh Development Agency (WDA; cy, Awdurdod Datblygu Cymru) was an executive agency (or QUANGO) and later designated an Assembly Sponsored Public Body (ASPB). Established in 1976, it was tasked with rescuing the ailing Welsh economy by encour ...

(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 Plaid ...

. Baglan Bay power station, a 500 MW combined cycle

gas turbine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directio ...

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 In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of hea ...

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 manufacturing company

Sofidel Group Sofidel is an Italian multinational producer of tissue paper for sanitary and domestic use. The Sofidel Group was founded in 1966. It is one of the world leaders in the tissue paper market and the second largest producer in Europe behind Essity ...

, 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 fina ...

) project, Hi-Lex Cable System Ltd, Remploy Ltd, Montagne Jeunesse, headquarters for

Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board Swansea Bay University Health Board (SBUHB) ( cy, Bwrdd lechyd Prifysgol Bae Abertawe) is the local health board of NHS Wales for Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, in the south-west of Wales. Established as Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Healt ...

, 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 Ecolab Inc. is an American corporation that is headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It develops and offers services, technology and systems that specialize in treatment, purification, cleaning and hygiene of water in a wide variety of applic ...

) 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 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
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Scottish and Southern Energy SSE plc (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy plc) is a multinational energy company headquartered in Perth, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. SSE operates in the United Kingdom and ...

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 withi ...

* Briton Ferry * 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