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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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Side by side

Dimension	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber	Norwich & the EastEast of England	Nottingham & DerbyEast Midlands
Sectors	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	AgriTech & FoodTech, Engineering Biology, Clean Energy Supporting: Life Sciences, Digital Technologies	Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Mobility & Transport Technology Supporting: Advanced Materials, Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech
Research	Not recorded on the map.	University of East Anglia John Innes Centre Quadram Institute	University of Nottingham
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. Plant and food research institutes, genomics facilities and offshore energy operations bases.	Not recorded on the map. Propulsion and nuclear engineering facilities, rail test capability and chemistry research centres.
Capital	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.	Research council and charitable funding dominate; venture capital is scarce.	Corporate and supply chain finance; limited venture activity.
Government programmes	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports	Freeport East — Freeports	East Midlands Investment Zone — Investment Zones East Midlands Freeport — Freeports
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.	Plant, food and genomics research of international standing, offshore energy operations and maintenance, and a significant agricultural production base on the doorstep.	Aerospace propulsion and small modular reactor engineering, rail technology, sustainable chemistry research and one of Europe's busiest air freight hubs.
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.	Commercial translation of agri-food science, and connection between offshore energy operations and the research base inland.	Diversification of the supply chain beyond a small number of large primes, and company formation from a strong engineering research base.
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.	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.	Propulsion and nuclear engineering connected to Sheffield manufacturing research and Midlands electrification — one Midlands industrial mission rather than three sectors.
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.	Food security and biotechnology intersect here more clearly than anywhere else in Britain, and connect to the proposed Oxford–Cambridge mission.	Propulsion and nuclear capability sit alongside the Midlands mobility mission. The proposed Midlands zone connects them.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

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