MANUFACTURING DEBATE IN ASSOCIATION WITH:


Richard Slater


Lancashire Business View (Chair)


Dean Curtis Beever & Struthers


John Pickervance Forbes


PRESENT: Maya Ellis


Lancashire County Council


Professor Robert Walsh UCLan


Iain Minton BAE Systems


Annette Weekes PDS Engineering


Bryan Welch Perspex International MAKING THINGS BETTER


We gathered our panel of experts at the University of Central Lancashire’s Engineering Innovation Centre on its Preston campus, with the help of the university, to talk about manufacturing in the county and its ecosystem


How would you define Lancashire’s manufacturing, engineering and defence ecosystem in terms of scale?


RW: Extensive but also very well-hidden. It is a heritage that we should be proud of. We do things in Lancashire that other counties would love to gather for themselves and pool into their ecosystem.


We have everything, from large businesses like BAE Systems, right the way through to very targeted SMEs and spinouts that are really doing some really special things.


But we’ve been not taking advantage of that scale as much as possible and at the university come across a whole range of opportunities.


It’s always about seeing the wonderful stuff that people are actually doing and telling people to


make sure we get Lancashire front and centre when it comes to potential and opportunities.


ME: We do a lot of work to try and get partners to all work together, to enhance innovation in the county. One of the things that’s overlooked


it contributes £30bn to the economy. However, the North West is underrepresented in MoD spending, despite having BAE Systems in Lancashire and at Barrow.


We are going to have to do something radically different on skills


in ecosystems is actually how you link up research, businesses, all the different needs.


Businesses are advancing through technological change and one of the challenges is the culture shift within and between organisations. We’re seeing a huge change in how people operate.


AW: The North of England has 297,000 jobs in advanced engineering and manufacturing and


We have some fantastic cutting-edge businesses here, from the biggest to tiny micro-entities working in cyber and yet the spend is underrepresented. So, we need to be better, whether that is in cyber, engineering or manufacturing, at working together collectively as a cluster and to bang the drum.


Continued on Page 64 LANCASHIREBUSINES SV IEW.CO.UK


Lucinda O’Neill Trostan Dene


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