Infrastructure Secretary Alex Neil insists Scottish firms are benefiting from the construction of the new Forth Replacement Crossing.
Transport Scotland’s principal contractor for the project Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors (FBC) announced a series of new orders for materials and equipment required to support concrete production for the £1.4bn span and associated roadworks.
Fife’s Skene Group will supply ready-mixed pre-batched concrete for works on the north side of the Forth while Tarmac, which has facilities at South Gyle and Livingston, will provide the same services for works on the south side of the river.
Tarmac has also been awarded a further contract to supply aggregate from Revelrig Quarry in West Lothian and a site in Lanarkshire for concrete to be used in the building of the main bridge.
A further agreement has been reached with Leicestershire’s Aggregate Industries to provide cement and admixture materials. The firm is to recruit a full-time manager at its Glasgow depot to support the contract.
Supply contracts for the new bridge are extremely sensitive and provoked a political row at Holyrood last month after it was announced 37,000 tonnes of steel required for the project was all to be imported to Scotland.
In the case of the concrete contracts, Scotland’s only cement supplier Lafarge a French owned firm with a manufacturing venue in East Lothian was unsuccessful in its pitch for FRC work.
Despite Lafarge’s failure, Mr Neil insisted the FRC project was having a positive bearing on Scottish business.
He said: ”It will support 1,200 Scottish jobs and secure an additional 3,000 more. Construction will deliver an annual average of 45 vocational training positions, 21 professional body training places and 46 positions for the long term unemployed, as well as providing further scope to maximise Modern Apprenticeship opportunities.”
However Transport Scotland pointed out that EU legislation forbade an organisation from discriminating in favour of a particular contractor on the grounds of their geographic location.