Lindsey Oil Refinery collapse leaves 120 tanker drivers redundant
Prax Group bought the Lindsey Oil Refinery from French company Total in 2021. The company's financial reports indicated the plant recorded losses of about £75m between the takeover and February 2024.Teneo said Axis had "suffered operational challenges as a result of the wider group insolvencies".The tankers would be sold to raise money, the administrator added.
Paul Warren, from the Community Union, confirmed all 120 tanker drivers had been told they were being made redundant. About 50 were based at Immingham, with 25 to 30 in Thurrock, a similar number in Kingsbury and about 10 in Scotland. A Community spokesperson said: "We understand that this afternoon our members at Axis Logistics in Immingham were called to a meeting with management and were informed that they would be being made redundant.""We are seeking further information from the administrators on next steps, and we will be communicating this to our members as soon as we know more."The "dedicated" workforce deserved "far better", the spokesperson added.
News of the redundancies comes after a number of petrol stations around Lincolnshire, which were supplied by another company within Prax Group, ran out of fuel over the weekend.On Friday, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said an agreement had been reached to resume deliveries in and out of the site.A DESNZ spokesperson said: "An agreement has been reached to resume deliveries in and out of the Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery. The Official Receiver is ensuring continued safe operations at the site."The UK is well supplied with fuel – the site is right next door to one of the biggest and most efficient refineries in the country and stock levels are normal across the UK."Prax Group has been contacted for a comment.
Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Click here, to download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and iPad.Click here, to download the BBC News app from Google Play for Android devices.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
6 hours ago
- Times
Can Tony Bloom's Hearts really topple the Old Firm with data instead of money?
Maybe the first thing to recognise about Tony Bloom is that it shows the credibility he carries that there has been no chorus line of sceptics sniggering and guffawing about all of his grand claims for Hearts. When we have been in this sort of territory before — yeah, we remember the characters who arrived and started bloviating about how this or that club was going to tear it up — let's just say it tended to come from chancers who were easy to dismiss. Bloom is another matter entirely. This is a very serious guy with a track record that stacks up. Not only has his personal wealth been estimated at up to £1.3billion, it was accrued largely from professional sports betting. In other words he has made an absolute fortune from showing exceptional judgment, much of it on football, so why would that suddenly desert him about Hearts and the SPFL? He bought into Brighton & Hove Albion and improved them significantly. Of even greater relevance to Hearts, given size and budgets, he invested in Union Saint-Gilloise and transformed them into Belgian champions 90 years after their previous title. Now he's rocked up and talked of splitting the Old Firm and winning a title and being in the Champions League within a decade. Many who would usually machine-gun anyone for coming out with this sort of stuff have held their fire. What is so staggering about Bloom's unshakeable confidence is that he foresees this total reinvention of Hearts, this calculated act of 'disruption', as being achievable without throwing money at them. His introductory investment of just under £10million is all there will be from him in terms of hard cash. He is basing an intended revolution on his complete faith in his company Jamestown Analytics. Sure, he knows Derek McInnes — and, eventually, any head coaches who succeed him — and the wider club staff and the training and stadium facilities all have major parts to play, but it is Jamestown he regards as the cornerstone of making Hearts great. So here's the thing: those of us who long to see the Old Firm properly challenged can have the utmost respect for Bloom and still seriously doubt that the Hearts project will pan out as he intends. Real improvement? That seems guaranteed. Trophies? Cups are quite likely soon enough. But win the league? There is just so much piled up against a club of their size, with their budget, in going the distance with two giant rivals over the marathon of 38 games. For a start, Jamestown are only data experts, even if Bloom may be quite right to acclaim them as the best in the business. Jamestown could unearth exciting talents for Hearts only for the players themselves to turn their noses up about coming. Or their agents could find them better deals elsewhere. And even when they come, and really impress, Hearts will be as vulnerable as any mid-sized club to others swooping in with attempts to quickly cherry-pick their stars. Building a title-contending team will be enormously challenging given their wage structure would leave them at risk of losing any truly outstanding talent (albeit for high fees) after a year, and potentially even to Celtic or Rangers. And say they do start to win consistently, month after month: they will have to keep their heads as well as their players. The attention and pressure which will build on them will be absolutely relentless. It's now more than 14 years since Rangers had the players and the nerve to win a league when there were fans in the grounds, and that's at a club where everyone always bangs on about having to be 'winners' to handle being there. Rangers are usually portrayed as credible challengers, though. That will all be new for Hearts if and when it comes. They will have to deal with growing national and even international media attention, the narrative of it being 40 years since the last non-Old Firm champions, endless questioning of their ability to go the distance, even the traumatic baggage of being the club which blew it on the final day in 1986. Leicester City showed a new force can come from nowhere and handle all of that stuff but it will be incredibly difficult. Union Saint-Gilloise may have waited nine decades for their title but the spread of champions in Belgium (seven different clubs in the past 17 years) meant it was less of a big deal there than it would be in Scotland. Then there is the big difference between the Belgian and Scottish leagues. After 30 games in Belgium the division splits and the top six play each other across ten more matches, home and away. Like in Scotland, everyone meets four times a season. But in Belgium the points totals from before the split are halved. Last season leaders Genk had 68 points before the split and 34 after it. Union Saint-Gilloise went from 55 points to 28 (rounded up). Suddenly Bloom's club went from trailing by 13 points with ten games left, to trailing by six when they still had two matches to come against the leaders. All they needed was a storming finish and they delivered exactly that, winning nine and drawing one of their post-split games to leapfrog the rest. Halving a hard-earned points total might not be especially fair on the league leaders but it sure as hell opens up competition and potentially keeps a title race alive. Bloom will know Scottish football well enough, even by now, to realise there is not a cat-in-hell's chance of Celtic and Rangers ever voting to ventilate the system in the same way here. Last season was typically chaotic and turbulent for Rangers and they were miles off a serious challenge to Celtic, but their final points total, 75, was a figure surpassed only once by any non Old Firm team in the SPL/SPFL era. In the past seven seasons no team other than Celtic or Rangers has reached even 70 points. So it will take a serious leap in consistency even for Hearts to haul level with Glasgow's underperforming runners-up. Beyond that, the past five titles have been won with between 92 and 102 points. Interestingly Bloom doesn't seem to be on record as ever saying Brighton could win the Premier League, even with Jamestown behind them. The stated goals there have been long-term — becoming an established top ten club (they pretty much are), qualifying for Europe (they made it for the first time in their history last season and narrowly missed qualifying again) and winning trophies (they reached the FA Cup semi-finals in 2019 and 2023). Those seem reasonable, realistic objectives, more sober than he has declared for Hearts. Yet this serial winner has seen something about Hearts and the Scottish scene which lit him up. Already he has talked like few dare to talk in terms of challenging Celtic and Rangers. He is far too substantial a guy to dismiss and that makes his conviction about what Hearts can achieve both surprising and absolutely fascinating. Good on him for every word of it.
Times
6 hours ago
- Times
Boomers, your country needs you — go have a night on the town
Nominations, please, for Scotland's minister for cocktails and clubs. According to NTIA — the Night Time Industries Association Scotland (who knew?) — the night-time economy requires a lifeline. Among its 31 recommendations for injecting some spark into proceedings is the creation of a dedicated minister. The obvious choice is Angus McNeil, who has shown remarkable stamina in this field. In 2005, after a ceilidh, the SNP MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar was discovered drunk in a hotel room with two girls aged 17 and 18 and a piper passed out in the corner, while his pregnant (now ex) wife was in hospital. The comedian Frankie Boyle called it 'the most Scottish sex scandal ever'. When the NTIA report came out, my first thought was 'what night-time economy'? I appreciate that I may not be the target audience for a Glasgow rave, but since Covid the hospitality industry has felt decidedly inhospitable. Prices have risen in inverse proportion to shrinking serving sizes, kitchens are open for less time than it takes to concoct a casserole, and 9.30pm is the new midnight. When I met up with two friends last week in a university town, the local Italian restaurant was busy at 7.30 pm. By 9.15pm, when we were settling the bill, we were the only guests. It was clear from the waiters' pointed behaviour that we had outstayed our welcome by about half an hour. Travelling in the Highlands last week, I came across numerous restaurant signs advertising opening hours as 6pm to 8pm. Eating out on holiday is one of life's pleasures — or should be. Expecting visitors to support the local economy seems a reasonable quid pro Merlot. Tourism should nourish the places it feeds on. But nobody is making it easy. At two of our favourite restaurants in a busy west coast crowd-puller, it is not possible to book a table after 7.30pm, and even at that time, you risk playing menu roulette with what is still on offer. Last Wednesday, we hit Plockton — the self-styled 'jewel of the Highlands' — just before 2pm. The beginning of August is arguably the apex of peak season in this beautiful part of the world. The town was its usual bustling self. But last orders for lunch had long gone. We traipsed the length of the front looking for nothing more lavish than a bowl of soup or a toastie. It wasn't simply that everywhere had stopped serving by 2pm that surprised us but the incredulity of the restaurant staff that we expected to be able to buy a meal at such an ungodly hour. I don't blame the restaurateurs, at least not entirely. Running a hospitality business has always been a passion project. But these days, the ratio of labour to love seems completely out of kilter. So many recent impediments have conspired to transform a traditionally difficult business with thin margins into a near-impossible enterprise with the most meagre of pickings. What is infuriating is that so many of the obstacles have been carelessly and unnecessarily created by the very people who should be building the economy. Brexit has deprived the industry of a seasonal workforce. Poor transport infrastructure — from the ferry fiasco to an underfunded road network — has led holidaymakers to abandon plans to visit our more remote communities. The lack of facilities and the inability to manage demand at tourist magnets such as Skye and Edinburgh have caused frustration among locals and visitors. The new Scottish local authority licensing scheme has made small tourism businesses unprofitable. Accommodation prices in Scotland have risen by 75 per cent since the pandemic. The UK's electricity bills are among the highest in Europe, and the costs of ingredients, including locally farmed or grown produce, have skyrocketed. The Scottish government's decision not to pass on to businesses Scotland's share of the £2.1 billion in business rates support announced by the UK government for the retail, leisure and hospitality industries is scandalous. All this combined with Labour's £25 billion raid on business in the form of increased national insurance contributions means it is not surprising that so many hospitality businesses are struggling. Some 285 Scottish pubs have closed permanently since the pandemic. Landmark establishments, including Kora by Tom Kitchin and the Lookout by Gardener's Cottage in Edinburgh and the Shed nightclub in Glasgow, have recently shut up shop. Add in the cost of living crisis, a public who have become more demanding and less accommodating, a surge in the use of weight-loss drugs — the antidote to indulgence and excess — and the fact that the average booking time in the UK is now 6.12pm as Gen Z prioritises rest and wellbeing over socialising, and you'd find more fun in your average nunnery. The night-time economy and the hospitality industry are subsets of the general economy. They are also barometers — the first to go before a big economic downturn. Their struggles are all of our struggles. It's not only an economic loss; it's a social and cultural loss. For most of us, many of our fondest memories involve late nights in great clubs, bars and restaurants. A nation that loses its night-time economy loses its joie de vivre. If Boomers want to do something really useful for the younger generation, they should go out and party like it's 1999. Splash that pension cash on caviar. Order that bottle of Krug — hell, make it a magnum. Stay out till 3am and totter back a hot but happy mess. Your country needs you to raise the roof, dance till dawn and paint the town crimson.
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Tories demand action as business leaders say lack of skilled workers is crippling economy
Tens of thousands of firms across Scotland are being forced to reduce their opening hours or slash services thanks to dire staff shortages which are crippling the economy. According to shocking new research, one in three small businesses is now closing early, shutting completely on certain days or scaling back their operations because they simply cannot recruit enough workers to operate fully. Business owners are frustrated they are losing trade worth millions of pounds, not through lack of demand, but through a lack of employees. The problem is particularly severe in rural areas, especially the Highlands and Islands, where a shrinking population means firms struggle to find enough working-age staff to fill vacancies. But across the country business owners are also complaining that, even where staff are available, many lack the basic skills and commitment to do the required jobs. The shortages are all the more concerning given that the unemployment rate in Scotland currently stands at 3.7 per cent - with more than 90,000 Scots out of work. Last night business leaders called for urgent action to support a key sector of the economy, while the revelations also sparked a fierce political row. Guy Hinks, chair of the Federation of Small Businesses Scotland (FSB) - which carried out the research - warned that economic growth was being stifled. He said: 'When you are running a small business, you want to be doing just that, running the business - not tearing your hair out trying to find staff. It's hugely frustrating, but it's a situation which tens of thousands of small Scottish firms find themselves in. 'The scale of the issue means it is not just a problem for the individual businesses themselves, it is a drag on the national economy. 'Many of these will be successful firms with ambitions to grow, perhaps to take on extra staff, but instead are being forced to curtail their operations due to circumstances beyond their control.' Small businesses are the backbone of the Scottish economy, with around 350,000 separate firms employing over 900,000 people and turning over £93bn annually. To understand the pressures firms are facing, the FSB has just completed a comprehensive 'state of the nation' survey of its members. With full results due to be published later this month, the FSB has shared with the Scottish Mail on Sunday its alarming findings on staff shortages - and the devastating impact on companies up and down the country. The survey reveals shortages have forced one in three (32.4 per cent) small businesses to make changes to their daily operations over the last year. Overall, almost one in five (18 per cent) cut services, while one in 14 (7.2 per cent) cut their opening hours. A similar number introduced unwanted changes to cover shortages - such as owners or senior managers being diverted from their normal role running the business to helping carry out day-to-day tasks. In rural and remote areas, particularly the Highlands and Islands, shortages are largely driven by demographic factors, as the overall population is falling while an ever greater proportion of people are retired. More than two fifths of small businesses in the Highlands (43.5 per cent) reported a lack of available local workers being an issue. According to the FSB, firms in every area of the country reported shortages of workers with technical and job-specific skills. Worryingly, they also said many businesses were concerned that staff lacked basic skills, such as communication, problem-solving and teamwork. Construction and hospitality were the sectors most badly affected. The Tories said businesses were being let down by the governments at both Westminster and Holyrood. The party's business, economy, tourism and culture spokesman Murdo Fraser said: 'This is clear evidence of the damage being done by the anti-business policies of both Labour and the SNP, and by the failure to invest in training and our homegrown workforce. 'The lack of suitably skilled workers, when record numbers of Scots are economically inactive, is a particularly damning indictment of the nationalists' failings in education. 'Their broken promises on rural infrastructure, transport and housing have only made matters worse.' Figures released earlier this year show the overall unemployment rate for people aged 16 years and over in Scotland was 3.7 per cent - rising to 11.5 per cent among people aged 16-24. In total, around 91,500 adults over 16 and over are unemployed, with just over a quarter being unemployed for 12 months or more. Last night the Scottish Government blamed Westminster for blocking its calls for re-gional visas, as well as for introducing visa restrictions on overseas workers and in-creasing employers' National Insurance contributions. Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes said: 'We have repeatedly called on the UK Govern-ment to work with us to develop tailored migration routes, including a Rural Visa Pilot, to grow Scotland's economy and strengthen our public services. 'Recent changes to the immigration system, including an increase to the skills and sal-ary threshold for the Skilled Worker Visa, have created additional barriers for business-es which rely on international talent to fill vital job roles. 'We continue to work with businesses to drive growth across the economy and call on the UK Government to reverse its damaging decision to raise employers' National In-surance contributions.' We can't get people we need, says hotel boss As director of a Highland hospitality firm, there is nothing more frustrating for Richard Drummond than having to close early. Yet even in the peak visitor season, when tourist numbers are at their highest, staff shortages mean he has no other option. 'We want to trade late into the evening,' he said. 'But now, even at the weekends and during the summer, we have no choice operationally but to shut earlier. We simply haven't got enough staff.' Mr Drummond helps run Turas Hotels which operates venues - including hotels, restaurants and bars, plus a distillery and brewery - in Pitlochry, Aviemore, Boat of Garten, Inverness and Ullapool. Speaking to the Scottish Mail on Sunday from the McKays Hotel in Pitlochry - where a lack of restaurant staff meant he was helping serve lunch to customers - he explained the pressures he faces. He said: 'I'm so proud of the businesses we've created: they're great holiday destinations that ooze Scottishness. 'And the Highlands are a world class destination that attract people from every corner of the globe. 'At peak times, the demand from visitors is huge. But trying to service that demand has become a real struggle. 'Trying to get staff and entice people into our industry has become more and more demanding.' Mr Drummond said Brexit and changes to visa regulations had made it far harder to attract workers from overseas - while the demographics of the Highlands mean he struggles to find staff locally. The short-term and seasonal nature of many hospitality jobs, he said, also made attracting workers difficult - as did the lack of affordable accommodation in many parts of the Highlands. He said: 'Tourism is one of the most important parts of the Scottish economy, but because it's fragmented around the country and often involves individuals or small-scale operators, it's simply not taken seriously enough by government. As a result, not enough is being done to support the hospitality industry, especially in rural areas.'
