Business park could create 15,000 jobs in Ulster

Plans for a pounds 100m investment in Northern Ireland with the potential to create up to 15,000 jobs were unveiled. The largest single jobs boost in the history of the province, if successful, could slash unemployment by nearly 25 per cent.

The Welsh-based investment company TBI, which bought Belfast International Airport for pounds 100m 15 months ago, proposes developing 190 acres of surplus airport land into a massive mixed-business development. The company proposes building the UK's first "call-centre park" of 450,000 square feet, offices, aircraft-maintenance hangars, freight, cargo and warehousing, business units and a non-food factory outlet village. Emphasising the potential for call centres, TBI said that in the US more than 40 per cent of all phone calls made were into and out through a call centre - in the UK it was only 4 per cent.