Advanced manufacturing gets £30m boost

A CONSORTIUM of research centres are set to share £30m a year of new funding as part of a new Government initiative to promote advanced manufacturing.

The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and its new sister facility the Nuclear AMRC, in Rotherham, will form the Technology Innovation Centre for High Value Manufacturing with five other manufacturing and process research centres around the UK.

The centre is expected to create 3,000 new research engineer jobs over the next ten years.

Business Secretary Vince Cable and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made the announcement as they visited the AMRC yesterday. The Government has plans to create a network of Technology Innovation Centres that will help turn university research into commercially viable products.

Mr Cable MP said: “The Technology Innovation Centre will help to equip UK industry with the ability to capitalise on the future global market opportunities by drawing on leading edge research and will form a key part of the Government’s work to rebalance the UK economy and create new high-value private sector jobs.

“The investment in the new centre will further bridge the gap between universities and businesses, helping to commercialise the outputs of Britain’s world-class research base.”

The AMRC is a partnership between Boeing and the University of Sheffield, which is also behind the Nuclear AMRC along with the University of Manchester and a collection of industry partners.

Professor Keith Ridgway, research director at the AMRC and programme director at the Nuclear AMRC, said: “We are delighted that the Government is backing high value manufacturing.
 
“The Government recognises that we are a manufacturing nation, and supporting the kind of collaborative research pioneered at the AMRC is a proven way of making sure that our manufacturers are at the cutting edge of innovation.”

The announcement coincided with the award of £4m in new funding for the University of Huddersfield to create a new ‘Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Advanced Metrology’.

Industry partners will add a further £3.2m to the grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for the centre which will look at ways of linking measurement and production to minimise cost in manufacturing.

The Government has also annnounced an extra £7m of funding for the Manufacturing Advisory Service to support its work on supply chain development.

Click here to sign up to receive our new South West business news...
Close