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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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Dimension	Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands	Birmingham & the West MidlandsWest Midlands	Glasgow & the Central BeltScotland
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Defence & Security	Space, Semiconductors, Quantum Technologies, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Clean Energy, Digital Technologies, Robotics & Autonomous Systems
Research	University of Nottingham	University of Birmingham University of Warwick WMG	University of Glasgow University of Strathclyde
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Glasgow small satellite manufacturing cluster
Infrastructure	Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres.	Energy Systems Catapult UK Battery Industrialisation Centre Automotive research centres, battery and vehicle test facilities and major logistics assets.	National Manufacturing Institute Scotland Satellite manufacturing capacity, nanofabrication cleanrooms and national manufacturing research facilities.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.	Corporate and supply chain finance dominate; venture capital is thin relative to industrial output.	Public co-investment and specialist funds; hardware scale-up capital is scarce.
Government programmes	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports	West Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones	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.	The largest manufacturing base in the UK by employment, automotive and electrification engineering, rail and mobility research, and a young, large working-age population.	More small satellites built here than anywhere else in Europe, quantum imaging and nanofabrication research, and a large applied engineering, manufacturing and energy research base.
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.	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.	Downstream value. Satellites are manufactured here while much of the data and applications value is captured elsewhere. Scale-up finance for hardware is limited.
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.	Midlands manufacturing paired with battery and power electronics research, North East battery production and Coventry testing capability as a single electrification value chain.	Glasgow manufacture connected to Cornwall launch and Earth observation, Harwell space applications and domestic data customers — one national space chain instead of four regional ones.
UKIZ relevance	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.	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.	Manufacture, launch and data are three different geographies in Britain. The proposed Scotland mission connects them deliberately.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · not a government designation

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