THE boss of GB Energy has revealed that the company is hiring "about two people a week" amid growing pressure over the number of jobs Labour promised to deliver.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland's Breakfast programme, Dan McGrail said GB Energy is anticipating employing 300 people "by the middle of next year".
"We're halfway through recruiting that at the moment," the chief executive added.
According to figures obtained by The National earlier this month, GB Energy has 141 employees, just 60 (42%) of whom are employed on a full-time contract.
There are 89 staff in Scotland (65% of the total workforce), with 57% currently based in Aberdeen – and just over half (57%) of those are full-time employees.
The remaining employees are either on temporary contracts or have been seconded from other UK Government departments.
In the wake of the 2024 General Election, GB Energy chairman Juergen Maier pledged "a thousand or more jobs" at the company's Aberdeen HQ – although he later went on to state that this total could take decades to achieve.
Ministers have since walked back on this claim significantly, with energy minister Michael Shanks insisting that "we've always said throughout that there will be a few hundred people working in the HQ".
But on Thursday, McGrail claimed that investment from the energy firm could create 10,000 additional jobs in the sector, vowing that the "huge majority" of these would be in Scotland.
He told how GB Energy plans to “crowd in £15 billion of additional investment as a result of our activities”, with the firm investing in projects to deliver 15 gigawatts of electricity.
McGrail continued: “We want to, as a result of that investment, create 10,000 additional jobs in the UK, the huge majority of those will be in Scotland.
“They’re the measures, writ large in our strategic plan, that I want to be held accountable for because they are absolutely what we believe we can deliver.”
