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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.

Choose up to three clusters

Side by side

Dimension	Liverpool City RegionNorth West	BelfastNorthern Ireland	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber
Sectors	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries	Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech
Research	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine	Queen's University Belfast Ulster University Centre for Secure Information Technologies	Not recorded on the map.
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Northern Ireland aerospace and composites cluster	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.	Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities.	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.
Capital	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.	A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US.	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.
Government programmes	Liverpool City Region Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports
What exists	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.	Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector.	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	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.	Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially.	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	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.	Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains.	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	Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.	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.	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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