How to revive the UK’s flatlined productivity
30 May 2025 
The UK’s manufacturing sector is at a pivotal moment. The world is changing, global politics are in flux and economies are seeing seismic shifts. This unpredictability is an opportunity for a manufacturing renaissance, argues Professor Ben Morgan, the new interim CEO of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).
In the past ten years, while the world has been changing, one thing has remained constant in the UK – flat productivity. Global events, from Brexit and the Covid pandemic, to conflict and energy price increases, have created a difficult business backdrop, which has made it much harder for businesses to invest. There has been no certainty or easy bets.
I’m confident that we can turn this tide; that productivity can increase once again, and UK manufacturing can stand at the forefront of this mission.
We have a strong manufacturing sector in the UK, around 90% being small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If we are to reverse the productivity stall, we need to look at how strategies align for a single vision – whether that is industrial, place-based or others – and deliver for SMEs and the broader supply base alongside the primes.
We should not view this so much as a challenge but as an opportunity for a revolution in manufacturing. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to kickstart it too, with new energy programmes, such as small modular reactors (SMRs) and floating offshore wind turbines, alongside new aerospace and defence programmes. Energy, mobility and infrastructure are all being looked at harder than ever by the government and industry, but now is the time to accelerate these programmes and give industry the confidence it needs to invest.
Why? Because the world desperately needs new materials, new processes, new products and new applications that give us national economic resilience, financial prosperity and environmental sustainability.
I think it is fair to say the current geopolitical situation has brought about real global uncertainty. International conflicts and new trade tariffs have brought risks to global supply chains. We need to ask what this means for the UK.
My feeling is that we have to try to control the controllables. For UK industry, and particularly for the AMRC, some of these controllables are developing cutting-edge innovation, deploying that innovation, and focusing on skills and talent – making sure that we are bringing through the next generation of makers, and looking at that future pipeline of talent much more broadly than we have before.
Clean energy revolution
Building new nuclear energy power stations in the UK is a critical component of achieving growth and net-zero. The High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult is actively supporting the necessary technology developments both for the leading companies, and across the supply chain.
We know there is a baseload of power that the UK needs. We also know there is substantial energy demand coming from our homes, businesses and indeed data centres in the UK – we host the most in Europe after Germany – and these form the spine for our growing use of AI. The need for more clean power will only increase.
That surge in demand poses a real challenge and requires a mix of solutions. Small modular reactors are part of the answer for providing the right amount of clean energy, close to the source of those data centres. And if the UK can be a pioneer in SMRs and capture that supply chain, we could not just drive the UK-based development of SMRs but export to global markets too.
The challenges are vast, but so is the potential. Building on the controllables, improving processes, driving innovation – if we can bring products to market quickly, we can ensure that the faith put in the manufacturing sector by the Government in the imminent Industrial Strategy, pays the economic dividends we all want to see.
That’s why flagship projects such as Composites at Speed and Scale are so important. Compass – an £80m boost to composites R&D for aerostructure manufacturing in the UK – will establish the vital methodologies for the future production of Boeing’s next single-aisle aircraft. It will need to be lighter than ever and capable of being produced at a rate that can meet burgeoning global demand. The open-access Compass facility will cut large component processing times from around 40 hours to about four, and is a brilliant demonstration of the global orientation of the UK’s innovation capabilities.
Diversity of thought for new products and processes is what is driving innovation; bringing fresh thinking and ideas to the table and stretching people’s preconceptions. That’s why we have to be looking beyond “traditional” engineering and STEM and more towards “STEAM” – including the creatives and the arts.
We’re already seeing the benefit of doing that at the AMRC. We’ve had apprentices who are former teachers reskilling into a new career, and design students interning with us – weaving the arts and creativity into what we’re doing. That kind of diversity of thought is especially important because of things such as AI, which we need to be leveraging into manufacturing.
To gain the competitive advantage, we have to be an early adopter. But we also have to walk before we can run. There are all sorts of technological pieces that we have to get in place first.
Building confidence
To have a real chance at achieving and sustaining all of this, we need an industrial strategy that is integrated across sectors and capabilities such as AI, hydrogen and mobility – but also across government – and it needs to have longevity and teeth. We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes we saw with the 2015 industrial strategy that was aborted. What businesses need more than ever is certainty to gain the confidence of the investors that we need back industry. We need to build that confidence as a sector.
Publicly-procured programmes hold the potential to jumpstart the advanced manufacturing renaissance, as long as we capture both the supply chain pieces and the OEM elements. These programmes and their longevity, give confidence, and create a good base of manufacturing on which businesses can invest in innovation programmes and the skills that sustain them.
Innovation doesn’t happen overnight. It can start small with one robot and a few connected machines. To do it on a bigger scale, to really impact productivity, bring in the right skills, innovation and supply chain, takes time. We have to start sowing the seeds of innovation now and to also think about how we do that with a localised approach.
AMRC Cymru and North West are both aligned to their regional economies, whether through skillsets, capabilities, or the technologies they’re developing, trying to drive productivity and adoption among SMEs. They have fantastic track records of impacting their regions, whether that’s AMRC Cymru’s Accelerating Decarbonisation and Productivity through Technology and Skills programme that’s elevated scale-up opportunities for SMEs, and enabled their adoption of digital tools, or its work with BAE Systems to investigate how digital technologies – along with greener, sustainable solutions – can elevate the RAF’s frontline aircraft.
The team at AMRC North West is building on its successful 5G Factory of the Future programme with the Factory of the Future Open RAN (FoFoRAN) exploring accessible and affordable 5G Open RAN options for manufacturing, to increase the resilience of the UK mobile network and ensure that we’re not overly reliant on any one form of technology. R&D programmes such as these are huge for the UK economy, with the potential to support thousands of jobs. The technologies developed can spill out into other sectors.
We see this support too in the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult, which works closely with the other centres to develop a strategy, and ensure that we’re building on opportunities for the nation, anchored locally.
This anchoring sees us working with local government. In South Yorkshire, we have a lot of advanced manufacturing assets. There are businesses developing skills and innovation with a strong link into the ecosystem – it’s vital that we capture that nascent talent and business in the market.
For example, our work with Magnetic Systems Technology (Magtec) in Rotherham to devise and improve processes and enable high-volume production of traction motors, enabled the business to revolutionise its manufacturing processes, resulting in a cleaner and 35% faster process that yields a more consistent product.
Through simulation and comprehensive evaluation and implementation of cutting-edge manufacturing processes, AMRC has helped to shape Magtec’s roadmap, embedding sustainable improvements that provide both immediate and long-term impacts, while providing Magtec with a strategic path to achieving its ambitious aim to build 5,000 motors annually – a six-fold increase in capacity.
The work we’ve done means we’re getting invitations to collaborate further afield. With our fellow HVM Catapult centre, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), we’ve started an exciting journey in South Wales, with the opening of the HVM Catapult Baglan. AMRC Cymru engineers will run the centre’s digital factory hub, with links to green steel and offshore renewables. There’s a swell of excitement for the links between North and South Wales. We need to keep building these relationships, but we also have to be in a position where we have the agility to respond.
There’s a huge amount of experience and talent in the AMRC family. I’ve been here for 17 years, and my career has taken me from the shop floor to top floor, starting as an engineer and now leading the organisation.
It’s like we’re at Everest base camp now, regrouping and readying ourselves because we want to head to the summit. I know there’s a lot more we can do; we have a lot more to give, there’s more impact we can make to transform lives through innovation – and we will.
