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	Teesside & the HumberNorth East / Yorkshire and the Humber	OxfordSouth East	Bristol & BathSouth West
Sectors	Clean Energy, Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech	Quantum Technologies, Life Sciences, Space, Artificial Intelligence Supporting: Clean Energy, Advanced Materials, Engineering Biology	Semiconductors, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Quantum Technologies, Defence & Security Supporting: Creative Industries, Advanced Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Clean Energy
Research	Not recorded on the map.	University of Oxford Rutherford Appleton Laboratory	University of Bristol University of the West of England Bristol Robotics Laboratory
Companies	Not recorded on the map.	Not recorded on the map.	Bristol semiconductor and processor design cluster
Infrastructure	Centre for Process Innovation Process innovation and biologics scale-up facilities, port capacity and grid-connected industrial land.	Harwell Science and Innovation Campus Diamond Light Source Satellite Applications Catapult National laboratory campus facilities, quantum fabrication and metrology capability, and clinical research infrastructure.	National Composites Centre Quantum and robotics laboratories, national composites facilities and aerospace test capability.
Capital	Infrastructure capital, corporate investment and public programmes; almost no local venture base.	University-linked funds and specialist deep tech investors, with London capital an hour away.	An established angel and seed base with strong deep tech interest; growth rounds usually come from London or the US.
Government programmes	Teesside Freeport — Freeports Humber Freeport — Freeports	No place-based designation recorded.	No place-based designation recorded.
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.	A research-intensive university alongside the Harwell campus, one of the largest concentrations of national scientific infrastructure in Britain, spanning space, energy, health and physical sciences, with distinctive quantum, vaccine and space applications strength.	Semiconductor and processor design, quantum engineering, robotics and autonomous systems, aerospace and composites, and a creative and screen economy of national significance.
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.	Access. National facilities are heavily used by their own communities; companies without an existing university relationship find the route in unclear. Scale-up space and later-stage capital are also constrained.	Fabrication and volume production capacity to match the design strength, and hardware-friendly capital. Companies scale by moving production abroad.
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.	Opening national facility access to companies across Britain as shared ecosystem infrastructure, and pairing Oxford quantum and space capability with manufacturing clusters that could produce at volume.	Bristol design capability connected to South Wales compound semiconductor fabrication and to composites and aerospace manufacturing — a western technology corridor with a complete chain.
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.	Oxford has infrastructure most countries cannot build. The proposed zone focuses on making that infrastructure accessible to companies that are not spin-outs of the university.	Bristol's design and robotics capability has historically been acquired rather than scaled. The proposed zone concentrates on the capital and customer connections that let companies stay independent.
Last verified	15 August 2026	15 August 2026	15 August 2026

Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation

Back to the map →Methodology →