Giving a lift to UK manufacturing  

Unlike so many other areas of UK industry that seem to have gone through an irreversible decline in the last 30 years, the aerospace sector has remained at the cutting edge of technology and continues to be profitable. Let’s face it there are not many areas of engineering where we can justifiably place ourselves as second in the world league table.

There’s no doubt that with its advanced, high-tech, high value processes and materials the sector is exactly the sort of industrial endeavour that politicians are keen to promote. Initiatives such as the government backed Aerospace Growth Partnership seem to be producing results. Its National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP) is an example. This is a £40 million funding pot aimed to help mature 100 undeveloped aerospace products or manufacturing processing technologies over the next four years.

The programme has already awarded funding for its first five projects which are now up and running and the bids for the second round of funding have now been accepted. The key benefit of the programme is its focus on helping SMEs develop their products and services. These smaller organisations often have the talented engineers and unconventional approaches that provide fertile ground for developing new ideas and technology, but not the financial resources to risk investing in a programme that may take years to produce lucrative returns. A little monetary nudge from government to help get the development process going surely has to be a good thing.

Programmes such as NATEP demonstrate that a small amount of government intervention can produce results. Few would argue for the return of wholesale nationalisation of the British manufacturing industry, but a precisely targeted light touch approach to public funding is more likely to deliver the long-term strategies needed to build a balanced UK economy. You can guarantee our competitor nations are doing much the same thing and probably spending ten times more.

Ideally the rest of UK manufacturing needs to follow aerospace’s example. Sectors such as the automotive industry or sustainable energy need to keep innovating to thrive and that will mean backing the ‘little guy’. It also involves making a long-term commitment, whatever colour of government happens to be in power, to give companies the confidence to invest not only in technology but also skills. If banks and private enterprise can’t or are unwilling to do it then the Government has to step in.

Only then can the ‘March of the Makers’, as George Osborne hailed the Government’s policy to revive UK manufacturing, really take off.

Ed Hill
Associate Editor