‘A change on the map’: The £400m vision to transform Derby’s industrial future
Gary Jones has a surprisingly straightforward measure for whether his hugely ambitious £400m INFINITY project has succeeded.
“A change on the map,” he says.
It sounds modest for a development promising 2,500 skilled jobs, another 15,000 indirectly and manufacturing capabilities its backers claim could be among the most advanced anywhere in the world.
But Jones, chief executive of INFINITY, means it literally.
The area earmarked for the project, close to Derby and the A50, is currently “quite a sparsely populated area that’s been earmarked for development for over a decade”.
His plan is to turn it into something altogether different.
INFINITY is envisaged as a technology park sitting at the heart of a much larger development within the East Midlands Investment Zone.
Around 200 acres will accommodate advanced manufacturing, testing, training and technology facilities, while housing and associated infrastructure will spread across a further 300 acres of the wider site. The planned Infinity Garden Village was one of six priority housing sites recently listed by East Midlands Combined County Authority.
The technology park’s literally in the middle,” says Jones. “There’s a housing estate planned for either side.
“That’s where you get the indirect benefit and jobs, because it means coffee shops, petrol stations, amenities associated with housing – and of course the people in the houses themselves.
“Hopefully, a significant number of those people will be working on the tech park situated in the centre.”
INFINITY is an enormous vision. There is, however, one fairly fundamental issue still to overcome.
The £400m needed to deliver it isn’t all secured.
Jones doesn’t attempt to pretend otherwise.
“INFINITY has a funding stack that we’re actively pursuing,” he says.
“We are a private company with a unique funding model. The model is based on a stacked approach of public and private investment.
“There’s an element of local, regional and, hopefully, central government support in recognition of some of the programme’s national capabilities.
“INFINITY isn’t part of existing academic or industrial funding programmes. This enables it to take a novel approach towards financing its build programme.
“Some of the capabilities we’re bringing forward will support the largest, most advanced technologies of their type in the world – so will genuinely put the UK ahead again.”
Private investors will also play their part.
“We’re also talking to investors who would be interested in programmes that result in a big GVA uplift, jobs, and which can genuinely change a region or an area,” Jones says.
“So is it all secure? Not yet. Are parts of it secure? Becoming that way. Have we got gaps to close out? Yes. So not dissimilar to many large or ambitious programmes.”
That candour matters because INFINITY is making some enormous claims.
Its proposition isn’t simply to build another employment park on Derby’s outskirts and fill sheds with manufacturers. Jones wants to create capabilities that either don’t exist in Britain or don’t exist here at anything approaching the scale required by industry.
The idea is to bring skills, advanced technology, testing and validation, and major national industrial programmes together in one place.
“We’ve got the ability to provide skills and training, so people are being developed,” he says.
“That already happens in the UK, clearly, but it doesn’t happen right next to world-leading capabilities or brand new technologies that don’t exist anywhere in the world – let alone in the UK.
“Those skills programmes don’t happen right next to test and validation capabilities for high-integrity products. Or as part of big sovereign programmes.”
The motivation behind INFINITY goes back decades.
“We’re looking to put back capability that we lost through the 80s and 90s, when they weren’t funded and supported,” Jones says. “It’s about getting Britain making high-value products again.”
There is now some tangible evidence behind that ambition.
UK Fusion Energy has become INFINITY’s first announced strategic partner, linking the Derby project directly with STEP Fusion, the UK’s programme to build a prototype fusion power plant at West Burton in Nottinghamshire.
The partnership will see UK Fusion Energy help shape manufacturing capabilities at INFINITY around technologies required by STEP, including the production, inspection and validation of large, complex components.
For Jones, securing major programmes like STEP is crucial. Without customers and industrial partners needing the capabilities INFINITY proposes to build, the project risks becoming little more than an ambitious property development.
He says discussions are taking place much more widely across industry.
“We’re working with UK industry primes and their tier one suppliers,” added Jones. “These companies and their businesses have got some of the most significant sovereign and growth programmes across the UK.”
More partnerships are expected to follow.
Then there are the jobs.
INFINITY’s headline projection is more than 2,500 skilled positions directly on the park and around 15,000 indirect jobs generated by the wider economic activity.
Those are substantial numbers, and Jones argues they will be generated progressively as individual facilities and technologies arrive rather than appearing overnight.
“Through the capabilities, as we build the park on the site, there’s a number of buildings to go up which, combined with the capabilities within them, will bring jobs and growth,” he says.
The next 12 months should therefore provide an important test of whether the vision is becoming reality.
“Funding, clearly,” says Jones when asked what needs to happen.
“Then progressing through the builds. That means getting the first building up and online in the shape of our INFINITY Technology Hub. That’s really important.
“We’re moving onsite next month into a building that’s already there and is currently being readied for us.
“But beyond that, we need a larger building that can cater for a lot of kit and equipment that customers want to use – and that kit and equipment will be used to train people.”
Jones repeatedly comes back to three words: people, process and technology.
“The ability to train people [and] also develop process at the same time. That’s people and process, and then technology: people, process, technology.”
There is another element to his “change on the map” that is less obviously industrial.
Jones wants INFINITY to function as an integrated development rather than a technology park surrounded by housing that happens to have been built at the same time.
That includes new access from the A50 and upgraded power infrastructure, but potentially also using waste heat generated by industrial processes to warm the neighbouring homes.
“The technologies we have planned produce a lot of heat,” he says. “We’d like to use the heat to heat the homes. I want a park that works from many different angles, inside out.”
There remains a long road between that vision and a completed £400m technology park.
Funding gaps need closing. Buildings need constructing. Equipment needs installing. Industrial partners need to sign contracts. And those eye-catching employment projections eventually need translating into actual people turning up for work.
But INFINITY now has its first major partner and a direct connection to one of Britain’s flagship technology programmes.
For Jones, the ultimate ambition remains strikingly physical: take a largely empty piece of Derby’s outskirts and turn it into somewhere that matters nationally.
If, in a few years’ time, the map really has changed, the argument will be that Britain’s industrial capabilities have changed with it.
