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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	Norwich & the EastEast of England	Liverpool City RegionNorth West
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries
Research	University of Nottingham	University of East Anglia John Innes Centre Quadram Institute	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	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. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases.	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.
Capital	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.	Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce.	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.
Government programmes	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports	Freeport East — Freeports	Liverpool City Region Freeport — Freeports
What exists	Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs.	Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep.	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.
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.	Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland.	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.
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.	Agri-food and genomics research connected to national food manufacturing and to engineering biology capacity, and offshore operations connected to the Humber and North East energy supply chain.	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.
UKIZ relevance	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.	Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford–Cambridge mission.	Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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