Why Greater Manchester sits at the heart of the UK’s aerospace and advanced manufacturing sector

Rachel Eyre is Head of Advanced Manufacturing at Invest Manchester, where she promotes Greater Manchester’s strengths across aerospace, defence and advanced manufacturing. She works with businesses, investors and industry partners to support growth, innovation and inward investment across the city region.

Greater Manchester sits at the heart of Europe’s largest aerospace cluster. With major civil and defence OEMs including BAE Systems, Airbus, MBDA and Safran on its doorstep, the scale of activity taking place across the city region is hard to ignore.

When people think about aerospace, they often think about aircraft manufacturers. What they don’t always see is the network of materials specialists, engineers, software developers and electronics businesses that sit behind them.

Over 115,000 people work across aerospace and related sectors in the city region, with 14,000 STEM students graduating annually from five universities. You’ll find major defence and aerospace companies here, including MBDA, KNDS, Thales, BAE Systems, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, alongside specialist manufacturers supplying components, materials and engineering services to the wider aerospace industry.

Greater Manchester’s advanced manufacturing story stretches back to the Industrial Revolution. Rolls met Royce here in 1904 before building what would become one of the world’s leading aircraft engine manufacturers, helping to shape modern aviation.

Yet it’s not just the history. It’s also what’s happening right now, and how decades of industrial investment have put the city region in a strong position for what comes next.

Turning research into aerospace innovation

Since graphene’s discovery here, over £500 million has been invested in research and infrastructure. The UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute partnered with Manchester’s Graphene Institute specifically on graphene’s aerospace applications, recognising the potential to apply it across lightweighting, thermal management and advanced coatings for aircraft structures and components.

That work is now moving from research into application, with businesses in the city region actively developing graphene-enhanced composites that reduce the weight of aerospace structures, coatings that improve thermal performance, and materials that extend the operational life of components in demanding environments.

There is a perception that Greater Manchester is excellent at R&D but less effective at taking products to market. It’s a view worth addressing, because the evidence points the other way.

What makes Greater Manchester different is that the pipeline from discovery to production exists in one place, and that shapes everything from how research is funded to how businesses grow here.

The strength of the supply chain plays an important role, but it’s just one of the reasons for the sector’s success.

What sits behind the supply chain we’ve built is a research base geared towards what the sector actually needs and, in my experience, that last part matters more than people realise. There is no shortage of regions with universities and innovation centres across the UK and Europe, but very few where the research agenda is shaped by industrial demand rather than academic preference.

The Oxford Road Corridor houses the Henry Royce Institute, the National Graphene Institute and the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre. Between them, they cover the full journey from fundamental research to commercial product, and the 65 spin-out companies and more than 400 industry collaborations that have come out of the graphene research alone tell a different story to the one sometimes assumed.

The Royce also hosts the Defence Materials Centre of Excellence, backed by a £42.5 million partnership with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, focused on materials for the most extreme operational conditions the defence sector demands.

Both Dstl and UK Defence Innovation have representatives in Greater Manchester, which means businesses can speak directly to the organisations shaping future defence requirements rather than trying to build those relationships from elsewhere.

From innovation to production at scale

Taking that research into production at volume is where Atom Valley comes in, providing the industrial land and scale-up infrastructure needed to feed into the region’s defence and aerospace supply chain.

Meanwhile, MIX Manchester, the only science and manufacturing campus in the UK with direct international airport access, sits at the other end of that pipeline. This means businesses can go from innovation to manufacture without leaving the city region.

The businesses that move here tend to find that things have the potential to move more quickly than they expected. This is down to the connections and partnerships that already exist between industry and research here, which take considerably longer to build anywhere else.

With a labour pool of 7.3 million within an hour’s reach, and operating costs up to 40% below London, it’s a strong choice for businesses looking for a UK or European base.

Through devolved powers, the city region designs and runs its own skills programmes, which means the talent pipeline can be built to match what the sector needs.

If you’re interested in finding out more about what Greater Manchester can offer, Invest Manchester is hosting a VIP reception at Farnborough International Airshow on Tuesday 21 July, an informal gathering for senior leaders across aerospace, defence and advanced manufacturing.

If you’re unable to make the reception, we’ll also be exhibiting on the North West Aerospace Alliance stand, Hall 1, Stand 1310, throughout the event.
To find out more or to register interest in the Farnborough reception, visit our website.