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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	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber	BelfastNorthern Ireland
Sectors	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing
Research	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	Not recorded on the map.	Queen's University Belfast Ulster University Centre for Secure Information Technologies
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Northern Ireland aerospace and composites cluster
Infrastructure	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.	Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.	A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US.
Government programmes	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.
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.	The largest concentration of industrial decarbonisation activity in the UK: hydrogen, carbon capture, process manufacturing, biologics scale-up capability and two Freeports with substantial serviced industrial land.	Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector.
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.	Skills pipelines and company formation. The land, power and permits exist; the innovation companies and the technical workforce to fill them do not yet exist at the same scale.	Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially.
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.	Industrial land and process scale-up capability connected to research clusters elsewhere that have technologies without a place to build them — a national scale-up site rather than a regional one.	Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains.
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.	This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability.	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.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · not a government designation

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