£120m investment secured for CoW

This week is pivotal for the Circuit of Wales with a Public Inquiry opening today to allow for the deregistration of land at the proposed site of the circuit, This week has also seen a major announcement from Michael Carrick, Chief Executive of the Heads of the Valleys Development Group, confirming to BBC Wales that the group has now raised £120 million towards the development costs.

One of the major question marks that has hung over the circuit has been related to doubts as to where the money for the project will come from with private investment required for two thirds of their projected £325 million budget. This budget is for infrastructure also included in the project such academy, hotels and other motorsport facilities such as an indoor flat track circuit as well as the actual Grand Prix circuit.

Carrick confirmed that the required private investment will be £200 million so having agreements already in place, pending the outcome of the Public Inquiry, is a very important step for the development. With £120m now earmarked for this investment is conditional upon work being cleared to begin and is coming from “Asian and American investors” an important step has been made to offer hope that the project will be able to proceed pending the Public Inquiry.

Chris Herring, a Director on the project, spoke to MCN last week about the project and the challenges facing them with local authorities but was confident that the investors were already in place to allow the project to continue to offer an attraction for an area that has struggled on the verge of poverty:

“We’ve got our lenders and investors ready to go,” said Herring. “The delay is just a local issue but we have a lot of local support because they’re desperate on this to happen. My recommendation is to have visit the area to see it, they live in poverty and have food parcels delivered every week.

“It’s going to take more than this project to change this but this will the start of that improvement and that’s what appeals to Dorna; to show that motorsport can have a massive influence in changing an area and the manner in which people live. They fully understand it and knowing that our sport can make such a big difference is huge to Dorna. That’s what keeps a lot of us going because we feel obliged to the local community to see this through. The tide will turn when we start to do some work.”

The Circuit of Wales has a five year agreement in place to host the British Grand Prix and last month came to an agreement with Silverstone to host the race.