Is a three-bed Essex house investing £50m in Teesside Airport?

Airport investor previously tried to buy British Steel

In this week’s edition I take a deep dive into a company which has pledged to invest £50m into Teesside International Airport. Is it too good to be true?

If you want to support our work in original journalism and investigations at The Teesside Lead, the easiest way is to sign up for free to get the newsletter delivered straight to you each week.

---

The Essex home that appears to be investing £50m into Teesside Airport (Image: Google)

The owners of an aerospace company investing £50m into Teesside International Airport are registered at two suburban homes, and the company has only had an online presence for a few months.

Alfor Aviation announced at Farnborough Airshow - one of the largest aviation trade shows in the world - its plans to set up at Teesside Airport. The company is developing a novel method of converting passenger planes into cargo planes. Currently, conversion usually involves cutting into the aircraft’s fuselage to create a new door, but Alfor’s innovation sees existing doors used and an interior lift to move cargo between two internal decks.

Teesside Airport’s announcement, made on 22 July, said the agreement had been “secured during discussions at the Farnborough International Airshow”, which had only begun two days before. One might imagine negotiations began before the show and both parties wanted to make a splash in front of the aerospace industry, but to secure a £50m investment which promises 250 permanent jobs in the space of two days is no mean feat.

I’m told Teesside Airport had been identified by Alfor around a year ago, and negotiations to secure the deal only took three months from first contact to announcement.

But Alfor’s social media presence only goes back to June of this year. Its website was built over a year after it was incorporated as a company. So what’s the story behind the company that’s investing £1m-a-year into Teesside for the next half a century?