Manufacturing


Midlands Engine cities are likely to be outpaced


A new report says that despite a growing economy, Birmingham is set to fall behind much smaller cities in the south in the next decade, including Milton Keynes, Oxford and Cambridge. The report is ‘UK Powerhouse’,


and is authored by law firm Irwin Mitchell and the Centre for Business & Economic Research (CEBR). UK Powerhouse estimates the


gross value added (GVA) figure for 38 of the UK’s largest cities, a year ahead of the government’s official figures. The report also estimates job creation in these cities. According to the report’s


authors, the new figures ‘cast doubt on whether the government’s new industrial strategy can tackle the current prosperity gap that exists between different regions in the UK’. This is despite the fact that UK


Powerhouse paints a rosy picture of the short term, saying that a positive end to 2016 for retailers helped the local economy increase by 2.4 per cent, compared to the previous year. The region as a whole also


benefitted from the thriving car manufacturing sector, which ‘went from strength-to-strength’. The report says that Jaguar’s decision to use the West Midlands as the production base of it new electric car was likely to give the region’s cities a boost. A further boost is London Taxi Company’s new Coventry plant, due to open this year.


Despite this, UK Powerhouse’s


authors say that the Government needs to do more to encourage balanced economies, and forecasts that for the next ten years, cities within the Midlands Engine area will continue to be outpaced by those with ‘greater balance’, such as Milton Keynes, Oxford and Cambridge.


‘The best performing cities are still set to still be those within the current high growth regions’


The report predicts that over the


next decade the gap between London and the Midlands Engine region is set to increase by a massive £46.6bn. Chris Rawstron, head of business


legal services at Irwin Mitchell in Birmingham, said: “Looking at our ten year forecasts of GVA, the best performing cities are still set to still be those within the current high growth regions of London, South East and East. “The challenge for the new


industrial strategy is how to emulate the successes of cities where clusters and networking effects have driven growth. Both institutions and skills need to be focuses for this industrial strategy. There are promising signs from the Midlands Engine, but the announcements are more likely to be small local boosts than total game-changers.”


GKN’s Driveline in Chinese joint venture


West Midlands-based GKN is to make its state-of-the-art electrified drivelines at a new facility in Shanghai from 2018, it has been announced. GKN says that its Chinese joint


venture – Shanghai GKN HUAYU Driveline Systems (SDS) – will produce more than one million of the new eDrive units per year by 2025. This figure is driven in part by


China being the world’s fastest- growing market for electrified vehicles. Production of electric and hybrid vehicles in China is forecast to grow by more than 400 per cent by 2025, to just under four million vehicles per year. The scale of the SDS eDrive


production hub in China will increase over the next seven years, with additional supply agreements set to commence for a range of domestic and international car manufacturers.


GKN Driveline chief executive


officer Phil Swash said: “We are seeing increased demand from automakers who want to work with GKN to develop the next generation of hybrid and electric vehicles, enabled by our state-of- the-art eDrive technologies. “The growth of vehicle


electrification is accelerating faster in China than anywhere else globally, so it is a logical step for GKN and SDS to establish China as a major hub for the development and production of eDrive systems.” In addition to the increased


investment in eDrive production capability, GKN and SDS will expand the engineering development resource in the region at a newly-constructed technical centre in Shanghai. In 1988 GKN became the first


major automotive supplier to establish a joint venture in China.


JLR Ingenium petrol engine in production


Jaguar Land Rover’s Wolverhampton-based £1bn Engine Manufacturing Centre (EMC) recently celebrated production of its first Ingenium petrol engine, which will be used for the first time in vehicles later in the summer. The inaugural petrol engines mark the completion


of the first phase of the EMC, which is a state-of-the- art manufacturing plant that serves Jaguar Land Rover’s three UK vehicle plants, including Solihull and Castle Bromwich. Jaguar Land Rover recently announced that the


EMC would manufacture the Ingenium petrol engine – the most powerful four-cylinder engine the company has ever produced – for the Jaguar F-TYPE. Trevor Leeks, EMC operations director, said: “The


Georgia Riley


start of petrol production marks an important milestone for the plant as we move to providing a suite of ultra-low emission, high-performance engines to power the full Jaguar and Land Rover vehicle line-up.


“Importantly, it also showcases the incredible


impact Jaguar Land Rover has had on the local economy with the creation of the 1,400 skilled jobs promised when we opened the plant in 2013.” The Wolverhampton plant has created more than


1,400 jobs, mostly for local people. Jaguar Land Rover said more than 125,000 hours of training has been undertaken to create a world-class workforce. Among them is Georgia Rigby, an integrated


manufacturing specialist in the petrol assembly hall, who joined the EMC in February 2016 from the catering industry. She said: “The EMC has quickly grown to be an


incredibly important part of this region, celebrated for the jobs created and the quality of the training and career opportunities on offer.” Since production of the Ingenium diesel engine


began exactly two years ago, the EMC has built in excess of 400,000 engines.


June 2017 CHAMBERLINK 53 New facility: The SDS technical centre


Sector Focus


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