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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	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber	Liverpool City RegionNorth West	Newcastle & the North EastNorth East
Sectors	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Life Sciences, Engineering Biology, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, Clean Energy, Creative Industries	Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology, Advanced Manufacturing Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies, Robotics & Autonomous Systems
Research	Not recorded on the map.	University of Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine	Newcastle University Durham University
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.
Infrastructure	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.	Not recorded on the map. University research institutes, automated chemistry facilities and port and logistics assets.	Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult Offshore renewable test facilities, battery production investment and university research centres.
Capital	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.	A modest local investor base; public and charitable research funding dominate.	Infrastructure and development finance, with limited venture capital relative to industrial scale.
Government programmes	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports	Liverpool City Region Freeport — Freeports	North East Investment Zone — Investment Zones
What exists	The largest concentration of industrial decarbonisation activity in the UK: hydrogen, carbon capture, process manufacturing, biologics scale-up capability and two Freeports with substantial serviced industrial land.	Infection and tropical medicine research of international standing, materials chemistry and automated discovery, a large port and a Freeport designation.	Offshore renewable energy testing at national scale, battery and electrification investment, ageing and life sciences research and a strong engineering base.
What's missing · UKIZ interpretation	Skills pipelines and company formation. The land, power and permits exist; the innovation companies and the technical workforce to fill them do not yet exist at the same scale.	Translation capacity: strong discovery science with limited local scale-up manufacturing and limited early-stage capital to hold companies in the city region.	Supply chain retention. Britain builds offshore capacity while importing much of the equipment; local firms often serve as installers rather than manufacturers.
What could connect · UKIZ interpretation	Industrial land and process scale-up capability connected to research clusters elsewhere that have technologies without a place to build them — a national scale-up site rather than a regional one.	Infection and biologics research connected to North West and Teesside biomanufacturing capacity, with the port used for export rather than only import.	Offshore testing capability connected to Teesside and Humber industrial land, Sheffield manufacturing research and domestic energy buyers — an energy supply chain rather than an energy market.
UKIZ relevance	This is where Britain either builds an energy supply chain or imports one. The proposed Teesside & Humber mission is explicitly about retained industrial capability.	Discovery and manufacture sit unusually close together here. The proposed Manchester mission treats the North West as one health and biomanufacturing geography.	The region has the industrial land, the ports and the skills base. The proposed North East mission focuses on retaining the supply chain, not only the assembly.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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