Steve Rigby launches Project MADE: plan to make the West Midlands a world-leading advanced manufacturing supercluster

Project MADE launches blueprint to unlock £44bn output and 50,000 new jobs in the UK’s industrial heartland

A new report published today by Project MADE (the Midlands Advanced Manufacturing Ecosystem) sets out a vision and action plan to create a world-class advanced manufacturing cluster able to compete with intensifying global competition from nations such as Singapore, China and Mexico.

Project MADE has brought together regional stakeholders, including Unipart Manufacturing, HORIBA MIRA, Midlands Aerospace Alliance, BCIC, Warwick Manufacturing Group, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Rigby Group, West Midlands Combined Authority, WM Growth Company, Coventry City Council, Coventry University and the West Midlands Investment Zone, to deliver a 10-year plan for growth and investment in the West Midlands advanced manufacturing sector. By 2035, the vision is to achieve 5% compound annual GVA growth in the sector, deliver £44bn in fi nal annual output, create 50,000 new jobs, and catalyse £1.6bn in aggregated advanced manufacturing investment.

Chaired by Steve Rigby, CEO of Rigby Group, Project MADE provides a framework for growth. The report proposes the formation of a new entity to drive delivery of an advanced manufacturing supercluster in the West Midlands. This includes the recruitment of a Chair and funding from public and private investors to deliver the outlined growth plan.

Project MADE underscores the region’s potential to develop advanced manufacturing practices, build new high-value supply chains, support scaling businesses, and generate employment opportunities across the region. The proposed vision would deliver on the government’s industrial strategy for the region, calling for a customer demand-led ecosystem that turns world-class innovation into scaled production.

Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, said: “Making things is what the West Midlands has done brilliantly for centuries, and that remains central to our economic revival as technology transforms industry. “Steve Rigby and the Project MADE team have set out a clear path for how industry can unlock investment and create high-quality jobs: My job is to help overcome any barriers to growth, and I’m already backing manufacturers to modernise production, upskill their workforce and move into new markets. “I’ll do what I can to help turn the recommendations in this report into tens of thousands of new jobs and position our region as the advanced manufacturing engine of our nation.”

The Rt Hon Greg Clark, Executive Chair, University of Warwick Innovation District and Member, HM Government’s Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, said: "This excellent report is a clarion call for the West Midlands to join all its forces together for greater impact and provides a clear plan of how to do it. It aligns with the national Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan and will support its delivery. “The West Midlands is advanced manufacturing’s home ground in Britain. Nowhere else has the breadth and depth of manufacturing assets - a unique ecology of manufacturers, their suppliers and suppliers to suppliers; leading universities and research and development centres that work in symbiosis with industry; specialist skills found in a young workforce; sites for development well connected with each other and the country by road and rail; direct connections to policy makers nationally and regionally. Sometimes these strengths are deployed separately rather than together, which limits their potential power."

Neil Rami, Chief Executive of the West Midlands Growth Company, said: "The report sets out a clear structure and priorities for the Growth Company to work with industry, universities and catapults under our new mandate to deliver the West Midlands Growth Plan. "Innovation starts, and scales, in the West Midlands. The region operates as a fully integrated system where ideas are rapidly developed, tested and industrialised within a single regional economy. We also have one of the UK’s largest applied R&D ecosystems outside London, supported by six research-intensive universities producing over 50,000 graduates each year. "Project MADE will help develop the region's advanced manufacturing sector further and ensure it remains a market leader, both nationally and internationally."

Steve Rigby, CEO of Rigby Group and Project MADE Chair, said:

“Project MADE has brought together key leaders across the region to turn a clear ambition into practical, coordinated action. The West Midlands has all the ingredients to lead globally in advanced manufacturing - our task now is to bring those strengths together with pace, focus and discipline.”

The report sets out four recommendations that will secure the region’s position as the UK’s leading advanced manufacturing supercluster:

• Establish “The advanced manufacturing supercluster”: Creating a new body with clear leadership and governance to drive co-ordination across the diverse advanced manufacturing ecosystem.

• Stimulate Customer Demand Generation activity: to connect SMEs directly to OEMs and Tier 1 buyers to address their pressing needs for resilience and innovation, while also "turbocharging" existing regional business growth programmes.

• Create a unifi ed investment proposition: Bolstering the regional advanced manufacturing proposition and creating a more integrated approach to inward investment.

• Strengthen foundations for growth and scale: Address structural barriers by mapping a 10-year real estate pipeline, boosting the investment pool and closing the "automation gap” through a plan to deliver 15,000 AI and automation-skilled workers.

While the West Midlands remains the UK’s industrial heartland, producing more manufactured goods than Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and the Liverpool City Region combined, the sector faces critical supply chain distress and chronic under-investment in automation. Project MADE argues that, without urgent coordinated intervention and implementation of the recommendations, the UK risks losing ground as global manufacturing systems are reshaped by electrifi cation and digitalisation.

Find out more at www.projectmade.co.uk