The UK has a great future in high-value manufacturing – but changes are needed

The opening of McLaren’s new production facility in Rotherham may have been rich in pomp and ceremony – a 3,850 horsepower convoy of supercars racing to meet the more sedate Royal fleet of Bentleys, for example – but behind the showmanship there are vital lessons for UK manufacturing. There are also important lessons for a government that has staked the economy’s future on an Industrial Strategy targeting just four grand challenges: future mobility, clean growth, artificial intelligence and an ageing population.

The first lesson is that the UK has a great future in high-value manufacturing. The second, especially in the case of automotive and aerospace, is that this requires industry to literally ‘lose weight’ (using composites and new materials), and possibly people (robotics, automation and artificial intelligence/data analytics). The final lesson is that all this happens best when three key partners learn to collaborate: industry, government and the research and innovation talent inside our universities.