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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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Dimension	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Liverpool City RegionNorth West	Cardiff & South WalesWales
Sectors	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries	Semiconductors, Advanced Materials, Creative Industries Supporting: Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Digital Technologies
Research	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine	Cardiff University Swansea University
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	South Wales compound semiconductor cluster
Infrastructure	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. Compound semiconductor fabrication and research facilities, materials and coatings research, production studios.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.	Public and corporate capital dominate; venture funding is limited by capital intensity.
Government programmes	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones	Liverpool City Region Freeport — Freeports	Wales Investment Zone designations — Investment Zones
What exists	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.	The UK's compound semiconductor cluster, combining research, fabrication and supply chain, alongside steel and coatings materials research, and a significant screen production economy.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	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.	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.	Design demand. Fabrication capability needs a pipeline of UK customers designing products that use it, and capital patient enough for semiconductor timelines.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.	South Wales fabrication connected to Bristol and Cambridge chip design and to defence, automotive and energy customers who currently source overseas.
UKIZ relevance	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.	Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.	Compound semiconductors are a genuine national specialism with a fragile ownership base. The proposed Wales mission focuses on keeping the value chain here.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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