Business Briefs - 18 August

Scotland’s last coal-fired power station, Longannet in Fife, is to close on 31 March next year.

The site’s owner, Scottish Power, said the high cost of connecting to the grid was to blame.

The company has also announced it is abandoning plans to build a new gas-fired power station at Cockenzie in East Lothian.

Longannet, which opened in 1972, is one of the biggest coal-fired power stations in Europe.

The power station employs more than 230 staff but Scottish Power said it hoped to avoid compulsory redundancies.

UK inflation rate rises to 0.1 per cent

The UK’s inflation rate turned positive in July, with the Consumer Prices Index measure rising to 0.1% from June’s 0%.

A smaller fall in the price of clothing was the main reason for the rise, the Office for National Statistics said.

The Retail Prices Index measure of inflation was unchanged at 1% - the figure that will be used to calculate rail fare increases next year.

CPI has been almost flat for the past six months, having turned negative in April for the first time since 1960.

Old Town hostel bought for £14.9m

The Edinburgh Hostel, a building providing student and tourist accommodation in the Old Town, has been acquired for £14.9 million.

The property, just off the Royal Mile, has been bought by Safestay, the listed operator with hostels in London and York.

The company is funding the deal to buy the 615-bed hostel with a debt facility worth £8.5m.

The purchase will take the number of beds in the group across four hostels to more than 1,500 during the peak summer season, and to 1,200 in the remainder of the year.

Safestay chief executive Phil Houghton cited the Edinburgh Hostel’s location as a key attraction of the deal, noting that Scotland’s capital city is in the top 10 in Europe for “millennials and youth travellers”.

Manchester group buys Dundee toxicology specialist

University of Dundee spinout CXR Biosciences has been sold by its shareholders – including Archangel Investors and the Scottish Investment Bank – to a Manchester-based researcher.

Concept Life Sciences has paid an undisclosed sum for the firm, which specialises in investigative and exploratory toxicology and employs 33 people.

All of CXR’S staff, including the management team led by chief executive Paul Smith, will remain with the business, which will also retain its name and Dundee base.

Oil price fall sees Wood Group cut 5,000 jobs

Aberdeen-based oil services firm Wood Group has cut 5,000 jobs this year as the fall in the price of oil has hit profits.

Pre-tax profit for the first six months of this year was $160.2m (£102.9), down from $233.3m a year earlier. Total revenue was down almost 20 per cent at $3.1bn.

About 1,000 jobs went in the UK, 3,000 in the US and 1,000 in the Middle East. The Aberdeen-based group employed some 40,000 workers in December last year.

The group announced in February that it would be shedding jobs to cut costs.