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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	Liverpool City RegionNorth West	ManchesterNorth West	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands
Sectors	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries	Advanced Materials, Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Creative Industries Supporting: Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Manufacturing, Financial Technology, Engineering Biology	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security
Research	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine	The University of Manchester Manchester Metropolitan University National Graphene Institute Greater Manchester health innovation partnership	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.	MediaCity Advanced manufacturing Catapult capability, North West National materials and graphene facilities, teaching hospitals and clinical research capability, and a major broadcast production estate.	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.
Capital	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.	A growing regional investor base and northern funds, with growth rounds usually led from London.	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.
Government programmes	Liverpool City Region Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones
What exists	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.	Advanced materials research including graphene and 2D materials, a large health innovation base built on hospitals and universities, a substantial digital and cyber economy, and the biggest broadcast and creative cluster outside London.	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	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.	The step from materials discovery to volume production, and a growth capital base proportionate to the research output. Health data at population scale is under-used by industry.	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	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.	Materials research connected to Sheffield and Midlands manufacturing, and health innovation connected to Leeds health data capability — a corridor rather than three separate cities.	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	Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.	Manchester has scale in four different economies that rarely commission from each other. The proposed zone concentrates on connecting health, materials, digital and creative capability around shared missions.	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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