Compare places

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	Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands	BelfastNorthern Ireland	OxfordSouth East
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing	Quantum Technologies, Life Sciences, Space, Artificial Intelligence Supporting: Clean Energy, Advanced Materials, Engineering Biology
Research	University of Nottingham	Queen's University Belfast Ulster University Centre for Secure Information Technologies	University of Oxford Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Northern Ireland aerospace and composites cluster	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres.	Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities.	Harwell Science and Innovation Campus Diamond Light Source Satellite Applications Catapult National laboratory campus facilities, quantum fabrication and metrology capability, and clinical research infrastructure.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.	A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US.	University-linked funds and specialist deep tech investors, with London capital an hour away.
Government programmes	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.	No place-based designation recorded.
What exists	Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs.	Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector.	A research-intensive university alongside the Harwell campus, one of the largest concentrations of national scientific infrastructure in Britain, spanning space, energy, health and physical sciences, with distinctive quantum, vaccine and space applications strength.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Diversification of the supply chain beyond a small number of large primes, and company formation from a strong engineering research base.	Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially.	Access. National facilities are heavily used by their own communities; companies without an existing university relationship find the route in unclear. Scale-up space and later-stage capital are also constrained.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Propulsion and nuclear engineering connected to Sheffield manufacturing research and Midlands electrification — one Midlands industrial mission rather than three sectors.	Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains.	Opening national facility access to companies across Britain as shared ecosystem infrastructure, and pairing Oxford quantum and space capability with manufacturing clusters that could produce at volume.
UKIZ relevance	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.	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.	Oxford has infrastructure most countries cannot build. The proposed zone focuses on making that infrastructure accessible to companies that are not spin-outs of the university.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

Back to the map →Methodology →