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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	Cornwall & PlymouthSouth West	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber
Sectors	Space, Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems Supporting: Advanced Materials, AgriTech & FoodTech, Digital Technologies	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
Research	University of Plymouth Plymouth Marine Laboratory	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	Not recorded on the map.
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Space and Earth observation capability, Cornwall Aerodrome and space capability, marine research and test facilities and naval 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.
Capital	Public programmes and a small local investor base; almost all growth capital is external.	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.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports
What exists	Space launch and Earth observation capability, marine autonomy and ocean research, and a distinctive combination of coastline, test space and specialist facilities.	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.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Company density and connectivity. Excellent facilities sit a long way from capital, customers and complementary suppliers, and skilled people are hard to retain.	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.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Launch and Earth observation connected to Glasgow satellite manufacture and Harwell applications, and marine autonomy connected to Solent defence and offshore energy demand.	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.
UKIZ relevance	The proposed Cornwall & Devon mission treats the sea and the satellite economy as one system rather than two separate sectors.	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.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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