Rishi Sunak – 2015 Comments on AV Dawson

The comments made by Rishi Sunak, the then Conservative PPC for Richmond, on 4 February 2015.

I had the great pleasure of driving a locomotive to open a new facility at AV Dawson!

The Dawson family founded the business 77 years ago. Today is it is a leading multi-modal logistics firm with a world class facility on the River Tees. The business is run by Gary Dawson, whose grandparents Vernon and Eleanor established the buisness. All they started with was a horse called Dina, a cart and a barrel load of coal! After some incredibly hard work by them and Gary’s father Maurice, the business now has revenues of almost £20m, 250 employees and global customers like Tata Steel and Nissan.

The government set up a £3 billion Regional Growth Fund to help create jobs in areas where they are needed the most. AV Dawson benefitted from a multi millions pound RGF grant to help them build a state of the art new steel warehouse – the largest investment in their company’s history. The company also increased employment significantly. The new facility sets the standard in service, environmental sustainability and innovation. Nationally the RGF is predicted to help create half a million jobs!

This is a fantastic example of investment in the North helping drive job creation and prosperity. Congratulations to everybody on AV Dawson on building such a great business. Thanks for giving me the fantastic opportunity to drive the train and blow that horn so loudly!