Two or three clusters, read side by side across sectors, research, companies, capital, infrastructure, government designations and UKIZ relevance. There is no score and no ranking: British clusters are different from one another, not better or worse than one another.
Choose up to three clusters
- London
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- Manchester
- Birmingham & the West Midlands
- Bristol & Bath
- Sheffield & Rotherham
- Leeds & West Yorkshire
- Liverpool City Region
- Newcastle & the North East
- Teesside & the Humber
- Edinburgh
- Glasgow & the Central Belt
- Belfast
- Cardiff & South Wales
- Southampton & Portsmouth
- Cornwall & Plymouth
- Nottingham & Derby
- Norwich & the East
Side by side
| Dimension | BelfastNorthern Ireland | Sheffield & RotherhamYorkshire and the Humber |
|---|---|---|
| Sectors | Defence & Security, Advanced Materials, Financial Technology, Creative Industries Supporting: Digital Technologies, AgriTech & FoodTech, Advanced Manufacturing | Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Materials Supporting: Clean Energy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Mobility & Transport Technology, Digital Technologies |
| Research |
|
|
| Companies |
| Not recorded on the map. |
| Infrastructure | Not recorded on the map. Cyber security innovation centre, composites and aerostructures manufacturing and agri-food research facilities. |
High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres, nuclear manufacturing facilities and industrial research factories. |
| Capital | A small local venture base supported by public co-investment; growth capital typically comes from Dublin, London or the US. | Public co-investment, corporate partnership and asset finance rather than venture capital. |
| Government programmes | No place-based designation recorded. | No place-based designation recorded. |
| What exists | Cyber security research and commercialisation of international standing, aerospace and composites manufacturing, agri-food research and a fast-growing software sector. | One of the strongest applied manufacturing research bases in Europe, covering machining, materials, nuclear manufacturing and factory-scale process development, working directly with industrial customers. |
| What's missing · UKIZ interpretation | Scale-up capital and market access. Companies reach a ceiling and are acquired, and dual-market access advantages are under-exploited commercially. | Domestic demand. World-class process capability is often demonstrated for overseas primes, and local SMEs lack the capital to adopt what is proven a mile away. |
| What could connect · UKIZ interpretation | Belfast cyber capability connected to UK defence and financial services demand, and composites manufacturing connected to Bristol and Midlands aerospace supply chains. | Applied manufacturing research connected to domestic customers — energy, defence, mobility and medical technology — with procurement used as the connector rather than grants. |
| UKIZ relevance | Northern Ireland's position between two markets is a commercial asset that is under-used. The proposed Northern Ireland mission treats it as the organising advantage. | The research is world class; the domestic customer base for what it produces is thinner than it should be. The proposed Midlands and Teesside & Humber missions both depend on this capability. |
| Last verified | 15 August 2026 | 15 August 2026 |
Proposed by UKIZ · independent · not a government designation