Engineering news
The Government is paying £53 million for “advanced manufacturers” to conduct research projects in the automotive, pharmaceutical, IT, lighting, electronics and infrastructure sectors.
The funding, announced today at the EEF’s National Manufacturing Conference, is being combined with more than £75 million of investment from industry. The £128 million will fund nine projects selected under the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative, a competition designed to support the Government’s industrial strategy.
Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said: “Britain is starting to win back business on the basis of hard headed business decisions based on quality and good performance.The supply chain funding announced today is another practical example of intelligently targeted government support helping UK firms to keep ahead of the game.”
The largest of the nine projects is £11 million of funding to a consortium of 22 life sciences companies led by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The consortium is to develop continuous manufacturing techniques and end-to-end supply chain platforms and improved purification and analytical technologies.
Automotive firm Cosworth will also receive £2.6 million as part of a £13.9 million project to create a R&D centre developing technology for the production of high performance engines. The centre, which will be built at Cosworth's Northampton site, will be developed with partners from Cranfield University and informatics system Flexeye to “address challenges in flexible manufacturing, intelligent quality assurance and supply chain management.”
Professor Ashutosh Tiwari, Professor of Manufacturing Informatics at Cranfield University said: “Cosworth’s new engine manufacturing facility in the UK will be supported by manufacturing informatics research at Cranfield University. We will develop novel assembly optimisation algorithms and supply chain modelling / visualisation techniques to enable flexible manufacturing at Cosworth using the latest informatics technologies."
Other projects include £4 million for an Oxfordshire-based company, Clearview Traffic Group, to move production of its solar powered road studs to the UK and a £6.2 million grant to develop a supply chain for the production of high efficiency plasma lighting for Milton Keynes-based Ceravision.