Economy
The most important employer in Barnard Castle is GlaxoSmithKline which has a large pharmaceutical manufacturing plant on the outskirts of the town which employs around 1000 people. The number of people employed could potentially be doubled if the site is chosen as the site of a new bio-pharmaceutical plant. GSK has invested over £80 million into the plant since 2006, and the company plans to spend a further £25 million in 2011 upgrading and investing in buildings and machinery.
Barnard Castle is located in a picturesque area of Teesdale and tourism is important to the local economy. Several holiday parks are located nearby including a Camping and Caravanning Club site and a new site for the Caravan Club. The town has a number of antique shops and an antique centre which attracts antique buyers from all around the world. The High Street has many independent shops.
Nearby Startforth has a young offenders' institution.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)