Business leaders welcome commitment to support advanced manufacturing

BUSINESS leaders across the West Midlands have welcomed the Government’s latest pledge to do all it can to support the region’s manufacturing industry.

The Government’s commitment has been underlined with a pledge to inject £213m into advanced manufacturing supply chains in a move to create thousands of new jobs and safeguard thousands of others.

Over £73m has been awarded from Round 2 of the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) to 12 national supply chain projects, and a further £140m will be invested by business.

Jaguar Land Rover said it believed the Government should do all it could to support measures to enhance innovation and engineering skills which would ensure Britain’s future manufacturing competitiveness.

Mike Wright, Executive Director at Jaguar Land Rover, encouraged Ministers and business leaders gathered at the 2013 BIS Manufacturing Summit at Gaydon to make innovation the Government’s key economic priority in the future to offset challenges facing UK manufacturers.

He said: “It is investment in innovation that will make the difference to the growth in the UK economy.”

Wright cited JLR’s track record over the past two years – creating more than 9,000 new jobs and investing almost £10bn in the UK supply chain – as evidence of the wider economic benefits flowing from a focus on technology and innovation at globally-successful UK companies.

But he highlighted the on-going challenge of supplier finance incentives and the shortage of graduate engineers as well as the fact that the UK stands at only 17th in the OECD for R&D support as a percentage of GDP.

“We recognise that Government has been working on these issues but if we are to rebalance and grow the UK economy, we need a continued focus on Government investment support for R&D, improved supplier access to finance – especially for small and medium size enterprises – and support for more engineering studies and skills-training.

“If our suppliers cannot access the right skills, technology and finance, then they may not be able to invest as much in the UK as we would all like,” he added.

Sir Peter Rigby, chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise, said the summit underlined the importance of the engineering sector to the region.

“We have put engineering and manufacturing at the very heart of our successful City Deal bid because we believe that it has great growth potential and can really drive forward the economy,” he said.

Louise Bennett, chief executive of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce – who was at the Manufacturing Summit at Gaydon, said: “The recognition of this region’s manufacturing, engineering and design innovation is certainly very welcome and this investment will benefit this crucial sector.

“As a chamber, we have been banging the drum for this sector for some time and recently announced a partnership with MAS, EEF and UKTI to strengthen the sector across Coventry and Warwickshire.”

Speaking on the Government’s pledge, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “Boosting jobs and growth is my number one priority to build a stronger economy. This investment will secure Britain’s future as a world leader in industries like cars, where we have traditionally taken the lead, and new technologies such as wind turbine gears and semiconductor chips.”