Sherford Consortium has completed the final drawdown of seed capital funding for the Freeport’s Sherford tax site, marking another significant step forward in the Freeport’s programme of investment and infrastructure delivery across the region.
The final drawdown of £233,000, the last instalment of the £1.2m allocated to Sherford under the Freeport’s seed capital programme, is contributing towards enabling works at Sherford Business Park. Combined with significant investment from the Sherford Consortium itself, the funding is helping deliver the earthworks, roads, sewers, and services needed to bring the site to a construction-ready standard.
Infrastructure Taking Shape on the Ground
Work is already well advanced. Roads and sewers are being installed across the site, sustainable drainage attenuation ponds are progressing, and cut and fill earthworks, the technique used to create level construction platforms by redistributing excavated soil, are underway. The intention is to deliver a fully serviced parcel of land by Q4 of this year, at which point it will be handed over to South Hams District Council, which acquired an 18.8-acre site at Sherford from the Sherford Consortium as part of a deal the Freeport funding helped bring to completion.
Enabling Defence-Driven Growth
Part of the Sherford site sits within the Freeport tax site and is set to play a direct role in the region’s defence-led growth. Once infrastructure works are complete, the site will provide the conditions for a defence end user to locate and consolidate logistics operations, optimising how they function across the subregion.
Critically, this consolidation will free up strategically important land within an existing defence estate for future growth purposes. The ability to relocate operations to a purpose-ready site at Sherford creates spatial and operational efficiencies that support the long-term development of defence capability in the region without requiring new defence land to be identified or procured.
“This is a big milestone for the Plymouth and South Devon Freeport. The Sherford Consortium, in partnership with South Hams District Council, is laying the groundwork for this site to become a significant hub for defence-related activity. The £1.2m of seed capital funding provides yet another tangible example of the Freeport programme delivering for the local community in support of the region’s defence-led growth agenda.”
Ian Cooper, Operations Director, Plymouth and South Devon Freeport
Seed Capital Delivering Tangible Results
The Sherford final drawdown is part of a broader picture of delivery under the Freeport’s seed capital programme. Established to unlock sites and stimulate private investment across the Freeport’s tax sites and wider geography, the programme is designed to do what private finance alone cannot — absorbing early-stage risk and making sites commercially viable for inward investment. The Freeport funding at Sherford did exactly that: making the infrastructure financially viable and helping get the land deal with South Hams District Council over the line.
“Completing the final drawdown of Freeport seed capital is a significant moment for Sherford and the Freeport. This funding, combined with the Consortium’s own investment, has made it possible to deliver the infrastructure that will enable us to deliver Sherford Business Park and create a place where businesses can locate and grow. Sherford has always been conceived as somewhere people can live, work, and build their futures – and this milestone brings that ambition meaningfully closer.”
Steve Fowler, Sherford Project Director, Sherford Consortium.
A Place to Work as Well as Live
The potential of the Sherford site extends beyond the defence sector. With essential infrastructure now being installed, Sherford Business Park is becoming a reality — and with it, the opportunity to create a genuinely mixed-use community, with real economic depth, where employment and housing grow together.
This aligns with the Sherford Consortium’s long-term vision for Sherford as a thriving, well-connected, and economically vibrant community — one in which the Freeport’s investment has played a meaningful part in making that ambition deliverable.
Plymouth and South Devon sits at the heart of the UK’s maritime and defence economy, and the Freeport’s role is to accelerate the opportunities that geography and heritage provide — removing barriers to investment, unlocking land, and making it easier for businesses to locate and grow in the subregion.
Further updates on Freeport site activity and investment progress will be published in the coming months.
For further information contact ian.cooper@pasdfreeport.com