IBM built it's first factory in Spango Valley, Greenock, in 1951; initially making typewriters, printers and other office equipment, the factory began making PCs in 1981. As production of these shfted overseas, IBM Greenock shifted to making servers and laptops.

IBM sold much of it's hardware manufacturing to Lenovo and Sanmina, who ran the plant in Greenock until 2006 before pulling out and shifting production to Hungary. 2000 IBM employees still work at IBM Greenock, mostly in a call centre, but the huge manufacturing halls stand empty.

This site is absolutely huge - several football-pitch-sized halls, some on top of each other, linked by enormous corridors and 4.5km of conveyors. I walked over a kilometre end to end - much further with all the diversions. It felt strangely familiar - a long time ago, I was a mainframe systems programmer for IBM...