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	Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber	EdinburghScotland	Cardiff & South WalesWales
Sectors	Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies	Artificial Intelligence, Financial Technology, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Digital Technologies Supporting: Engineering Biology, Life Sciences, Quantum Technologies, Creative Industries	Semiconductors, Advanced Materials, Creative Industries Supporting: Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Digital Technologies
Research	University of Sheffield	University of Edinburgh Heriot-Watt University	Cardiff University Swansea University
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Edinburgh financial services and fintech cluster	South Wales compound semiconductor cluster
Infrastructure	Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre Nuclear AMRC High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories.	National Robotarium Informatics research facilities, robotics commercialisation facilities and supercomputing capability.	Not recorded on the map. Compound semiconductor fabrication and research facilities, materials and coatings research, production studios.
Capital	Public co-investment, corporate partnership and asset finance rather than venture capital.	Large institutional asset management presence; venture activity is smaller than the capital base implies.	Public and corporate capital dominate; venture funding is limited by capital intensity.
Government programmes	No place-based designation recorded.	No place-based designation recorded.	Wales Investment Zone designations — Investment Zones
What exists	One of the strongest applied manufacturing research bases in Europe, covering machining, materials, nuclear manufacturing and factory-scale process development, working directly with industrial customers.	One of Europe's largest informatics research bases, robotics and autonomous systems commercialisation capability, and a substantial asset management, banking and financial technology sector.	The UK's compound semiconductor cluster, combining research, fabrication and supply chain, alongside steel and coatings materials research, and a significant screen production economy.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Domestic demand. World-class process capability is often demonstrated for overseas primes, and local SMEs lack the capital to adopt what is proven a mile away.	A connection between the capital sitting in Edinburgh's financial institutions and the technology being created a mile away; and later-stage funding to stop companies relocating south.	Design demand. Fabrication capability needs a pipeline of UK customers designing products that use it, and capital patient enough for semiconductor timelines.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers — energy, defence, mobility and medical technology — with procurement used as the connector rather than grants.	Scottish institutional capital connected to Scottish deep tech, and Edinburgh AI and robotics capability connected to Glasgow manufacturing and satellite production.	South Wales fabrication connected to Bristol and Cambridge chip design and to defence, automotive and energy customers who currently source overseas.
UKIZ relevance	The research is world class; the domestic customer base for what it produces is thinner than it should be. The proposed Midlands and Teesside & Humber missions both depend on this capability.	Scotland's research strength is not in question; its scale-up retention is. The proposed Scotland mission focuses on the capital and customer layer.	Compound semiconductors are a genuine national specialism with a fragile ownership base. The proposed Wales mission focuses on keeping the value chain here.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

Back to the map →Methodology →