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Two or three clusters, read side by side across sectors, research, companies, capital, infrastructure, government designations and UKIZ relevance. There is no score and no ranking: British clusters are different from one another, not better or worse than one another.

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Side by side

Dimension	BelfastNorthern Ireland	Norwich & the EastEast of England	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands
Sectors	Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing	AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security
Research	Queen's University Belfast Ulster University Centre for Secure Information Technologies	University of East Anglia John Innes Centre Quadram Institute	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG
Companies	Northern Ireland aerospace and composites cluster	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities.	Not recorded on the map. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases.	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.
Capital	A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US.	Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce.	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	Freeport East — Freeports	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones
What exists	Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector.	Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep.	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially.	Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland.	Ownership of the value in electrified vehicles: battery, power electronics and software increasingly sit outside the region and outside the UK. Innovation-active SME supply chains are under-capitalised.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains.	Agri-food and genomics research connected to national food manufacturing and to engineering biology capacity, and offshore operations connected to the Humber and North East energy supply chain.	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.
UKIZ relevance	Northern Ireland's position between two markets is a commercial asset that is under-used. The proposed Northern Ireland mission treats it as the organising advantage.	Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford–Cambridge mission.	The region's transition depends on owning the new value in a vehicle rather than assembling someone else's. The proposed Midlands zone focuses on batteries, power electronics and software.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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