Wales' Freeports and investment zones combine substantial tax reliefs, long-term funding commitments and active local partnerships to attract large-scale investment across clean energy, semiconductors and nuclear - with skills and supply chain strategies built in to make that investment last.

One UKREiiF panel session, ‘Unlock Wales' competitive edge: Investment zones and Freeports’, explored how Wales is positioning itself as a destination for large-scale inward investment. 

The session was chaired by Mark John, Co-Founder of Tramshed Tech, and featured representatives from Celtic Freeport, Ambition North Wales, Newport City Council and Anglesey County Council.

What Freeports and investment zones actually offer

The panel was clear that Freeports and investment zones are more than a collection of tax reliefs. At their best, they represent a framework for building whole industrial ecosystems around the assets and opportunities that a region already possesses.

The Celtic Freeport, founded in 2024 through a public-private partnership and established with support from Browne Jacobson, covers 480 hectares of designated tax site land across two locations. The Port Talbot steelworks area sits at its heart as a hub for clean steel and energy transition, while the deep-water harbour at Milford Haven, already home to significant refinery infrastructure, is attracting interest from major firms seeking energy security and developers working on sustainable aviation fuel. The overarching ambition is to decarbonise and sustain a highly active industrial area.

The North Wales Investment Zone, centred on Wrexham Industrial Estate and Warren Hall near Airbus, is structured as a 25-year programme. Backed by £160m from government for the first 10 years, the ambition is to crowd in £1bn of private sector investment and create 10,000 jobs. The zone leans into opportunities around small modular reactors and offshore wind. 

The Freeports’ tax offer is substantial, covering relief on premises, employer national insurance, land exemption tax and capital allowances, meaning that occupying a larger unit inside the zone can cost comparably to a smaller one outside it. The panel was candid that once available sites are committed, they are gone.

In South East Wales, the Cardiff Capital Region Investment Zone stretches from Cardiff city centre through the planned Cardiff Parkway station to Newport West. Its focus is on research and development-intensive companies, and that is already bearing fruit. International businesses including Vishay, IQE, KLA and Microsoft are active in the zone. At its core is a 40-hectare semiconductor cluster being developed around existing anchor firms, with major capacity expansion under way at Newport Docks, the largest port in Wales.

The Anglesey Freeport, launched in March 2026, is focused on driving global trade and investment. The island faces real economic challenges, including approximately 4,000 job losses over the past 15 years, making the Freeport a genuine economic lifeline. 

Its greatest coup is the designation of the site for the UK’s small modular reactor programme, which has been earmarked by government for spearheading future nuclear energy generation. Crucially, the panel was clear that Anglesey's Freeport complements, rather than competes with, Celtic Freeport, as the two serve different target sectors.

Creating a picture of Wales as an investable nation

A recurring theme was additionality. Investment zones and Freeports are not about displacing existing economic activity but about creating a genuinely new innovation environment that can attract investment that would not otherwise have come to Wales. The Humber Freeport was cited as an illustration: once centred on fishing, the area is now a hub for offshore renewable energy and a platform for building a high wage skills base.

In North Wales, the approach has been deliberately collaborative. Rather than running the programme from the top down, delivery was devolved to councils directly connected to skills providers and research organisations. Businesses and landowners were actively invited to bring forward opportunities, with the programme responding to where genuine growth potential was identified.

The panel was also emphatic that supply chain development is what makes investment sticky. Attracting a major anchor investor is only the first step; building the supply chains that sustain it over time is what creates lasting economic benefit and ensures that jobs remain in the region for generations.

Skills and how Wales will grow its own talent

Skills were a recurring concern. The semiconductor industry, for example, currently recruits internationally simply to fill available roles. While attracting people from elsewhere is welcome, the panel was clear that local people deserve access to these well-paid, high-skilled jobs and that building the pipelines to make that happen is a core part of what investment zones and freeports must deliver.

One model put forward was a demand-pull approach to skills provision, drawing on a blueprint developed in Seattle, where employers work directly with skills providers rather than relying on a supply-push system. Integrating skills provision with training infrastructure and employer demand was presented as the ambition for South East Wales.

The 25-year horizon of the North Wales programme is significant in this context, allowing partners to plan skills provision at a pace and scale that shorter-term programmes can’t support, mapping demand over time and building frameworks that allow workers to move between sectors as opportunities shift.

How businesses can engage

Freeports are actively working with landowners to bring underused land forward. End users can become members of a Freeport and take a role in overseeing how it is run, giving businesses a genuine stake in the governance of the area in which they operate.

As Freeports mature and business rates begin to flow through their structures, further opportunities for engagement will open up. The panel described freeports as having the potential to become a genuine convening power, a platform through which businesses, skills providers, research institutions and public bodies can come together around shared economic ambitions.

Together, each of the four Freeports and investment zones across Wales are capable of acting as linchpins for a national economic offer greater than the sum of its parts.

Our view

The panel made a persuasive case that Wales is putting the building blocks in place for sustained inward investment and economic advancement. What was striking was the emphasis not just on fiscal tools, but on governance, skills, supply chains and community benefit in making investment last. In areas that have been prone to decades of boom and bust, making this a reality is crucial.

Securing this investment will create the jobs and vibrant places that keep the best talent inside Wales, while attracting new highly skilled people.

For businesses considering where to locate or expand, the combination of substantial tax advantages, long-term programme certainty and active local partnerships makes Wales worth examining seriously. For developers, landowners and infrastructure investors, the pipeline across the two freeports and investment zones represents significant near and medium-term opportunity.

We work with local authorities, developers, investors and businesses across freeports, investment zones and major infrastructure projects. If you would like to discuss how the themes raised may be relevant to your work, please get in touch with our public law team.