Looking ahead
By Simon Jones, Chief Executive of GCRE Ltd

2025 is shaping up to be a landmark moment for the UK rail industry.
In the same year that we celebrate its bicentennial, the twelve months ahead will also see major decisions taken which could affect the next two hundred years, from the new model and shape of public ownership to the arrangements of the new Great British Railways to major strategic choices for projects such as HS2.
2025 will be a watershed in the life of the Global Centre of Rail Excellence, too. GCRE has the potential to become Europe’s leading hub for rail and sustainable mobility innovation, a truly international magnet for world class rail research, testing and showcasing of next generation rolling stock, infrastructure and cutting-edge new technologies.
Becoming the UK’s first ever net zero in operation railway and supporting the innovations needed to decarbonise the UK and European railway, GCRE could be a game-changer in lowering the costs of major rail infrastructure across the world and being one of the standout developments in shaping rail’s future. All this, at the same time as rebuilding local prosperity in a part of the UK significantly impacted by de-industrialisation, by creating 1,100 highly skilled jobs.
The GCRE team have lived and breathed the project for more than seven years and with the significant support and assistance of both the Welsh and UK Governments, two local authorities and the local community, substantial progress has been made in developing GCRE from a concept on the page to what it is today – a genuinely shovel-ready scheme able to get going as soon as private investment is secured.

Over the last few years outline planning permission has been secured for the facility; a skilled core team has been built, and a 700-hectare site has been purchased – the former Nant Helen mining site in South Wales – on which preparatory earthworks have been progressed. Crucially and alongside this GCRE has tangibly demonstrated the strong commercial demand that exists for a purpose-built facility for European rail innovation.
In that time clients including Hitachi Rail, CAF, Network Rail, Transport for Wales and Thales have committed to take testing and research time at the GCRE facility once it is operational. In all, more than 200 companies across the international rail supply chain have indicated their desire to use the unique-to-Europe infrastructure that GCRE will have on site.
The fact that hugely successful global players as well as respected SMEs in the rail industry are signing up to use GCRE services in advance of opening highlights the facility has significant commercial potential and that the capability we are providing is urgently needed. But the challenge from the start has never been making a successful business out of GCRE once it is built, it has always been – and remains – raising the significant capital needed to construct the facility in the first place.
2025 will be the moment when all of our hard work at GCRE over the last seven years comes to a decision point.
From the start of the journey, the model for GCRE has been to use the public funding that had been set aside for us – £50m from the Welsh Government and £20m grant from the UK Government – to prepare the development to a point where the £400m project could be taken to market. That process began in April 2023, when GCRE undertook a public procurement to secure the private finance we needed.
Through that mechanism several credible potential bidders came forward, all of them committing significant time and resources to the process. They welcomed the detailed and creative GCRE proposals that we had developed, recognising the significant demand that exists for such a facility, not just here in the UK, but across Europe, the Middle East and further afield.

But like all major projects, it has not been plain sailing. No matter how strong the commercial demand for a facility like GCRE, getting access to significant capital funding for construction was always going to be the greatest hurdle to overcome. Looking back, our biggest barrier was that we began our search at the very time when the UK’s economic headwinds were at their strongest. As we would soon find out, this was to be a challenging time for any major project to be finding large scale capital funding.
At the time, around the end of 2023, potential bidders indicated two primary reasons for being unable to commit to our project. The first was uncertainty in the UK rail market, including a lack of pipeline visibility, changing political appetite for rail and a consequent lack of committed revenue that could be guaranteed by the business. The second was due to wider economic factors, including above trend inflation and interest rates.
What was frustrating for the team at the time was that what seemed like short-term factors could threaten the progress of such a vital piece of long-term infrastructure investment and a once in a generation opportunity for Wales and the UK to become a genuine leader in European rail innovation.
What we had to do then was re-shape the investment search. Because the formal procurement had been unsuccessful, we were able to develop a more flexible approach to identifying and securing potential investors. That approach has allowed us to extend the search for investment partners.
As a result, we are now in detailed dialogue with a new potential funder, whose values and ours are closely aligned. This could result in a new way of funding economic infrastructure, which will require a new approach to how the company is structured and owned in the long term. We hope to be able to say more about this in the next few months. But the policy benefits of GCRE remain strong – every £1 invested in GCRE will result in £15 of benefits being realised by the local community and the national railway industry.
While there have been challenges, we remain positive about the future. We retain the ambition to develop a new, world class rail innovation facility in South Wales. One that can serve a significant, European and international market and be a beacon for place-based economic development. The prize at stake for the communities, industry and environment around GCRE is certainly significant. GCRE is a project that can make transport better, can help rebuild local prosperity, that will establish a net zero railway and that will renew an amazing place.

There are ten good reasons to continue to be optimistic about the search for investment and why GCRE can and must make progress in 2025.
GCRE will make transport better: By significantly enhancing research, testing and showcasing capability GCRE will fill a strategic gap in rail and mobility as a place to undertake innovation at the cutting edge. The products and technologies tested at GCRE will become the backbone of the stronger, greener and more affordable transport systems we all need for tomorrow.
GCRE will make Wales and the UK the global leader in rail R&D: By helping to establish Europe’s only purpose-built site for infrastructure innovation, GCRE will help Wales and the UK establish itself as the European and global leader in technology, research and standards development. GCRE would help develop new capabilities in the UK economy, stealing a march on European rivals looking to develop similar capabilities. One of the biggest structural barriers to moving the industry and the Welsh economy forward is the need to attract a greater share of competitively awarded R&D investment – both public and private. Wales has 5% of the UK population but has historically attracted only around 2-3% of R&D funding and rail, too, needs to pull in more R&D funding relative to other industries. GCRE provides an investible project into which to focus R&D activity and an attractive host for investment through research councils.
GCRE will help us decarbonise transport faster: By supporting the UK and the wider rail industry’s decarbonisation plans by helping develop new rail and transport technologies that can be deployed faster to reduce carbon emissions and encourage more people onto our railways. For example, GCRE will help develop new hydrogen and battery technologies as well as more cost-efficient methods of electrification. Something we have already begun to demonstrate on the GCRE site.
GCRE will help rail achieve greater value for money: GCRE will support greater value for money and stronger cost control by more comprehensively testing new technologies before they are deployed on the mainline railway and before problems emerge. In particular, GCRE will help to lower the costs of major projects by helping to test the integration of multiple technologies earlier in the innovation life cycle, avoiding the costly delays seen on projects such as HS2 and Crossrail.
GCRE will enhance UK rail exports: As a leader in breakthrough new technologies and products, GCRE would be strategically placed to help Wales and the rail industry translate new innovations into new economic strength and help the UK increase its share of global rail exports, taking advantage of the fact that no other country in Europe or the Middle East would have a comparable facility.
GCRE will support high quality skills training: GCRE will play a pivotal role in nurturing talent and upskilling the workforce in a variety of rail engineering, operations and management disciplines. By offering specialised training programs in a live railway environment, GCRE will ensure that our workforce remains competitive and capable of driving innovation in the rail sector.
GCRE is the definition of active industrial policy: GCRE is a strong example of long-term, active industrial policy in action that will generate long-term, high-quality jobs in a de-industrialised part of the UK, becoming a ‘magnet’ that can draw in other, high-quality investments. With a Technology Park on site – space for new companies; incubator labs for tech-start-ups; partnerships with local universities GCRE can create strong foundations for new business births in an area where that activity is needed.
GCRE will help to renew an amazing place: GCRE will regenerate a former coalfield site and improve its biodiversity to make it an attractive destination for visitors in a way that links its proud history with its bright future. We will open a new 100 bed hotel for clients and visitors, operating at Net Zero. We will create a network of footpaths and cycleways for leisure and commuter use and create new tourism and cultural heritage attractions. We will plant 500,000 native species trees, rewild at least 300 hectares of former open cast coal mine to improve biodiversity gain and leverage the GCRE facilities to generate new focus and magnify pride for the local community by becoming a hub for new businesses and social activities.
GCRE is shovel ready and able to support the Tata transition: Critically, GCRE lies just 15 miles from the Tata Steelworks in Port Talbot, which has announced 2,800 job losses over the next few years. GCRE is a consented project able to get diggers in the ground this Spring. In the immediate term GCRE will provide skills re-training for former Tata employees to find similar technical roles in rail – it is estimated that within 90 minutes of the Port Talbot site there is a demand for 3,400 roles in rail over the next two years, in maintenance and capital projects. Longer term GCRE will itself provide an important source of alternative employment both at the facility itself through roles created directly at GCRE as well as through partners operating at the site.
GCRE will help to rebuild local prosperity: Perhaps most importantly, GCRE is a place-based intervention in the heads of the valleys. A recent economic appraisal by PWC highlighted that GCRE was a ‘very high’ value for money project that has the potential to create 1,100 jobs in its first decade and contribute £300m GVA uplift to the local economy. GCRE is a golden opportunity to support a new industrial cluster in a part of the world in need of new jobs and investment.
Given the demand that we can all clearly see, it is very likely that a nation somewhere will succeed in constructing a high-quality, purpose-built facility for rail innovation. That opportunity is one we are determined that Wales and the UK takes and is one we are still actively pursuing.
The next year may be as consequential as any in the two-century history of our railways. It will certainly be consequential for GCRE, too.