Middlesbrough have their offices in the town. Teesport is from the North Sea and east of Middlesbrough, on the River Tees. Teesport is currently the third largest port in the United Kingdom, and amongst the tenth biggest in Western Europe, handling about 50 million tonnes of domestic and international cargo per year. The vast majority of these products are still related to the steel and chemical industries made by companies that are members of NEPIC. NEPIC is an industry led economic cluster body that promotes the development and growth of the chemistry based process industries around the Tees Valley and the
Middlesbrough it shares characteristics of both. Furthermore, the accent reflects the town's history. This accent is also known as a Smoggie accent or a Teesside accent. "Nurse/Square" A recognisable feature of Middlesbrough English is the fronted form of NURSE, reflecting its similarity with Liverpool English, having the characteristic NURSE/SQUARE merger at [ɛ:]. Additionally, the form is found to be the preferred variant of female speakers. This can be heard in words like work, purple, dirt and shirt which are pronounced more like "werk/wairk", "perple/pairple", "dert/dairt" and "shert/shairt". Another feature of the Middlesbrough accent is the presence of a harsh "CK" sound.