Prestwick Airport flights win and Royal Bank of Scotland journey

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Ian Forgie, chief executive of Prestwick Airport, hailed this agreement with China Southern Air Logistics as a 'game changer'.
In doing so, he echoed the phrase used by Nico Le Roux, head of cargo operations at Prestwick, about e-commerce flights in February, after the airport won major business from Hong Kong. It has been fascinating to observe, and write about, Prestwick Airport's big push on the cargo side of its business, and its focus on winning e-commerce traffic.
Mr Le Roux in February revealed the airport's expectations that cargo revenues would more than treble to in excess of £10 million a year.
He was speaking hours before the arrival of the first Hong Kong Air Cargo flight at Prestwick, bringing packages ordered by UK and Irish consumers on the likes of the Temu, SHEIN, and TikTok platforms.
Cargo revenues at the airport, which is known officially as Glasgow Prestwick Airport, totalled £3.228 million in the year to March 31, 2024.
Mr Le Roux revealed his expectation that cargo revenues would be more than treble that level in the airport's financial year to March 31, 2026, on the back of recent new business wins.
The agreement between Prestwick Airport and China Southern Air Logistics has seen the carrier start scheduled cargo flights at four per week between Guangzhou and Prestwick, with plans for this to increase to a daily service.
The first of these scheduled flights landed on May 16 at Prestwick Airport, which described the freighter services as 'a new direct export route to China from Scotland for high-value Scottish seafood and whisky'.
Prestwick Airport, when it announced the arrival of China Southern Air Logistics on May 16, noted it had invested £2.3 million in equipment in the past 12 months.
It also highlighted its continued investment in ground-handling equipment and cool chain supply facilities, as well as the building of its workforce, to maximise its capabilities in handling large freighters.
The investment at Prestwick, which has included equipment to handle the wide-door Airbus A350 cargo aircraft, was plain in February when I went airside with Mr Le Roux.
My subsequent column in The Herald on May 21 declared: 'It is most encouraging to see all the planning and investment at Prestwick Airport coming together.'
It added: 'The airport makes a very important economic contribution to Ayrshire and more broadly to Scotland, one that is too often disregarded by the politically motivated carpers. These detractors also seem to forget that the airport supports an aerospace cluster in and around it which employs about 4,000 people, or maybe they just do not really care about this.
'Prestwick Airport's growing success is all the more reason for the Scottish Government to ensure that any sale is made with the future prosperity of this strategic asset, including on the employment front, in mind.'
The column observed there was no reason to believe this would not be the case.
When I asked Kate Forbes about the future of Prestwick Airport in April, in the wake of First Minister John Swinney confirming the existence of an 'active bid' in late March, she said: 'We have obviously saved Prestwick Airport more than a decade ago, precisely because of its strategic importance to the Scottish economy.
'If and when Prestwick is sold, it will be for the new owner to develop a business case.'
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Deputy First Minister Ms Forbes, who highlighted Prestwick Airport's cargo operations, declared: 'We have set out very clear lines that we want Prestwick to continue to operate as an airport.' The institution formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland (now NatWest Group) has also been in focus in the past month as it has headed towards full private ownership.
In a column in The Herald, I reflected on having covered the institution's rollercoaster ride over the past three decades. This article addressed the 'perennial big question' in the mid-1990s, observing: 'Back in the mid-1990s, Royal Bank was progressing solidly but the big question which perennially hung over it, as it did over rival Bank of Scotland, was whether the institution would be swallowed up by one of the big London players.'
The column went on to recall the frenetic bid battle to buy big four UK bank NatWest between these two Edinburgh clearing banks, in which Royal Bank of Scotland ultimately prevailed.
The column highlighted the 'good times' that followed.
It then recalled, in 2007, Royal Bank's hostile bid, in a consortium with Santander and Fortis, for Dutch bank ABN Amro.
The column observed: 'By the time the acquisition of ABN Amro was completed by the Royal Bank consortium in October 2007, there had already been signs of what turned out to be the emergence of the global financial crisis that was going to take a lurch for the worse less than a year later with the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008.'
In autumn 2008, Royal Bank had to be bailed out by the UK taxpayer, ultimately to the tune of £45.5 billion.
The article noted: 'It was not entirely clear at the time but this was to mark the beginning of the end of Royal Bank being an institution based in Scotland.'
Mulling the shift of control to London, the column observed: 'Stephen Hester succeeded Mr Goodwin as chief executive of Royal Bank amid the global financial crisis. He appeared acutely aware of Royal Bank's importance to Scotland, visiting The Herald's offices soon after taking up the role. New Zealander Ross McEwan then took up the top job in late 2013.
'There were signs that the nerve centre was gradually moving to London. However, it was only in the immediate wake of Alison Rose's appointment as chief executive in late 2019 that it could be stated definitively that this had happened. The key was that her contract stated she would be based in London. Paul Thwaite, who succeeded Dame Alison in summer 2023 and looks to have done a good job in raising the institution's profits, is also based in London and has made no bones about this.'
In February 2020, not long after Dame Alison took the top job, a momentous name change was revealed. It was announced that Royal Bank of Scotland's name would be changed at parent company level to NatWest Group, and this took effect in July that year.
The column concluded: 'Dame Alison, who joined NatWest as a graduate trainee, worked for the London bank at the time Royal Bank acquired it in 2000.
'With the confirmation of the move in where the bank was being run from and the name change, it looked as if things had turned very much full circle and, in terms of the London-Edinburgh dynamic, the boot was very much on the other foot.'
This article was first published in The Herald's Business HQ Monthly supplement