MSPs this week continued to express hope that Prime Minister Andy Burnham will reverse course on Ming Yang’s kiboshed £1.5 billion investment to create a wind turbine factory in the Scottish Highlands.

In a debate on energy on Thursday afternoon, SNP MSP Emma Roddick said people in her constituency of Inverness and Nairn, which includes the proposed Ardersier Port site, “understand the importance and value of local jobs” and that she hoped “a way forward can be found with the new UK government, as there is huge potential”.

Lloyd Melville, SNP MSP for Angus South, echoed her remarks and added: “National security must of course be taken seriously, but what made that pill harder to swallow was that the very same UK government returned from China boasting about Chinese investment elsewhere in Britain.

“UK ministers welcomed it in Liverpool, and they have welcomed it in London. They are open for business, but not when the business is to come to Scotland.”

In his closing remarks, the Scottish Government’s minister for Europe, external affairs and Europe, Stephen Gethins, said Roddick was “right to raise the issue of Ming Yang” and said he had “called upon the UK government to do what it has done elsewhere and to look at having guardrails”.

The minister went on: “In all collegiality, I continue urging the UK government to do that, and I would be very happy to meet with ministers and to work with them on that.”

World-leading wind turbine manufacturer Ming Yang Smart Energy announced plans in October 2025 to build the UK’s largest and first fully integrated wind turbine manufacturing facility at Ardersier Port. The £1.5 billion project would, it said, have initially created up to 1,500 jobs with another 1,500 potentially to follow, as well as up to 8,000 jobs in the supply chain.

However, the business case for the project collapsed in late March 2026 when the UK government under then Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it would not allow turbines manufactured at the facility to be used in UK waters on grounds of “national security”.

Despite calls from both the Scottish Government and Ming Yang for Burnham to reconsider the decision, his government has so far shown no indication that it will reverse course.

Following a high-profile intervention from former UK business secretary Sir Vince Cable, who suggested that the Labour government seemed to be “reluctant to align with the SNP administration”, junior UK government minister Michael Shanks accused him of peddling an “absolutely absurd view”.

More recently, Ardersier Port owner Haventus signed a memorandum of understanding with Dajin Heavy Industry, a leading Chinese manufacturer of offshore wind foundations and operator of specialist transport vessels.