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Lanarkshire shows its mettle in the heat of the new industrial revolution


E


xactly 150 years ago, the Gartsherrie furnaces were the technological wonder of the age. The Clyde Ironworks,


in Lanarkshire, where the hot-blast process of inventor J B Neilson made iron-making more efficient, had three immense engines purely for generating the blast, giving the furnace an ore- melting temperature of 800° Celsius. In 1868, David Bremner in his weekly industrial essays in The Scotsman said: “The most extensive ironmasters in Scotland are Messrs Baird and Co, who own 42 blast furnaces, employing 9,000 men and boys, and produce 300,000 tons of pig iron a year.” Coatbridge alone had 16 furnaces. “Gartsherrie Ironworks are the largest


in Scotland, and it is stated there is only one establishment in Britain which has a greater number of furnaces,” noted Bremner. The furnaces devoured a thousand tons of coal every 24 hours. The Lanarkshire iron and steel


industry has now all gone. So have the coal mines that fed the furnaces and much of the railway infrastructure that made Lanarkshire the great industrial heartland of Scotland. Today, Lanarkshire has done so much to reinvent itself, without losing sight of its heritage and legacy for innovation. Nick Shields, the head of the Scottish


Manufacturing Advisory Service (SMAS), spoke in January at the Construction


Scotland Innovation Centre in Hamilton about how Lanarkshire and, indeed Scotland, can grasp the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, based on cyber-physical systems. He pointed out the impact this revolution will have on the UK economy. The Made Smarter UK review identified a £455 billion opportunity for businesses over the next 10 years, about £90 billion of which exists within construction businesses, which have a large presence in Lanarkshire.


“Digital design, asset maintenance,


construction techniques, factory production and supply chain management can all dramatically improve productivity in this sector. The benefit to consumers is lower-cost properties delivered with a smaller carbon footprint and utilising resources in a far more efficient manner. This would represent a 9 per cent increase in productivity for construction businesses,” he told the Lanarkshire audience. The CSIC in Hamilton showcased


a range of productivity-enhancing technologies, including advanced robotics, that can dramatically improve productivity. “We are engaging with manufacturing businesses across Glasgow and Lanarkshire in order to identify opportunities to improve productivity through more efficient processes such as lean production. SMAS assists more


than 200 businesses each year to implement productivity projects, and it has delivered £11.8 million of efficiency savings to businesses in Glasgow and Lanarkshire in the last three years,” said Shields. While Lanarkshire is embracing


innovation, there is a very mixed business economy, a fact recognised in the 7th Lanarkshire Business Week. Supporting this diversity is Choose Lanarkshire, a joint inward investment initiative between North Lanarkshire Council and South Lanarkshire Council. They have been promoting


Lanarkshire’s excellent connectivity with Edinburgh and Glasgow airports less than an hour away. Perhaps more importantly, Lanarkshire also lies at the heart of Scotland’s motorway network, with the M80 northbound, the M74 southbound and the M8 connecting the east and west of the country all running through the region. Added together, Lanarkshire has an outstanding range of business parks and facilities. The most well-known sites are Eurocentral, adjacent to the M8 Glasgow to Edinburgh motorway, which is Scotland’s leading business location and is a mixed industrial and business hub. Eurocentral Partnership, a joint venture between Muse Development and Scottish Enterprise, has more than 15 million sq ft of space, while BioCity Scotland, where several life science firms are being incubated, is next door on the same M8 corridor. Alongside Eurocentral is the Maxim


GLASGOW AIRPORT


M80 M8


M74 EDINBURGH AIRPORT


Office Park, employing more than 3,700 people and includes the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Regus Business Centre, Ford, Cisco, NCR, Sure Thing Insurance and Amey. While nearby Strathclyde Business Park, at Bellshill, is a well-established mature parkland providing 1.4 million sq ft of business and lifestyle space. The park is home to major occupiers such as Scottish Power, Wood Group, Virgin Media, NG Bailey and Macquarie Bank. Hamilton International Technology Park on 116 acres provides 1.3 million sq ft of office space. It is home to more than 80 companies, including ScottishPower, John Lewis, Babcock and HSBC, and


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