June 2006

News

Outlook optimistic on economic growth
Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by a steady 0.6 per cent in the first three months of 2006, pushing the annual growth rate up from 1.8 per cent in 2005 to 2.2 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Growth in the service sector slowed to 0.7 per cent from 1 per cent in the final quarter of 2005, largely due to weaker retail sales, but manufacturing recorded an unexpected 0.7 per cent increase in output, the sector’s best performance since 1999. This was led by stronger sales of transport and electrical equipment, with the manufacture of aircraft and spacecraft growing by 9.4 per cent and that of railway and tramway locomotives by 8.7 per cent (although the latter sector had contracted by 23.4 per cent over the previous 12 months).

Sales of electrical goods such as television sets have increased in the run-up to this summer’s World Cup finals in Germany – though compared with the same quarter in 2005, manufacturing output was still down 0.6 per cent. The broader measure of industrial production, which includes industries such as oil and gas, mining, and power and water utilities, was similarly up 0.7 per cent for the month, although mining output and oil and gas extraction were down by 8.5 per cent year-on-year.

The manufacturing picture may be mixed, but optimism among UK manufacturers is on the increase, with expectations of higher orders reaching their highest levels for two years, according to the quarterly Industrial Trends survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The employers’ body found that roughly as many companies felt more optimistic about the general business situation as felt less optimistic, with a balance of minus 2 per cent representing a significant improvement from the minus 22 per cent recorded in January 2005. In the first quarter of 2005, the volume of total orders increased for the first time in five quarters, helped by strong domestic demand for capital goods and a slower decline in demand for products such as chemicals and building materials.

A new survey of general business confidence meanwhile predicts that economic growth will accelerate in the second half of 2006, rising to 3.4 per cent in the third and fourth quarters, compared with 2.4 per cent in the same period of 2005. The Business Trends Report from accountants BDO Stoy Hayward also revealed that companies think inflation will come in at 2.2 per cent for the year, slightly above the Treasury’s 2 per cent target. According to the report’s authors, the main factors behind rising business confidence – in the short term, at least – were a rebound in consumer spending, an economic recovery in continental Europe and rapid rises in stock markets. BDO Stoy Hayward said that the service sector was leading growth but that manufacturing was also seeing a “respectable” increase in output.

The growth in GDP means that interest rates are likely to remain unchanged at 4.5 per cent at least for the time being. “This is not a growth rate that is in need of any further assistance from the Bank of England,” commented David Brown, chief European economist at Bear Stearns. However, the government is reliant on interest rates rising slightly if it is to meet its 2 per cent inflation target, so it is probable that any future movement will be upwards.


Education is key in international exchanges
Prime Minister Tony Blair has unveiled two five-year initiatives to help secure the UK’s position as a leader in international education. The second phase of the Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education (PMI) aims to attract an additional 100,000 overseas students to study in the UK and to encourage partnerships between academic institutions in the UK and overseas; while the UK-India Education Research Initiative (UKIERI) sets out to improve educational and research links between the UK and India. The programmes are backed up with $49 million in funding over the next two years from the government, the British Council, the education sector and businesses, including BP, BAE Systems, GlaxoSmithKline and Shell. “We want to see many more shared research projects, shared courses and joint degrees; we want to see more exchanges of students and academic staff; we want UK education to become genuinely international,” said Mr Blair.

A prime example of international collaboration is Nottingham University’s new Nottingham Ningbo University campus, which was established in the city of Ningbo in China’s Zhejiang province in 2003. The campus, modelled on its parent university in the East Midlands, is the first western academic institution to be set up in China. It has enrolled nearly 1,000 students from different countries, including the UK, who are taught UK-accredited degrees through the medium of English. Now the pioneering collaboration has been recognised with a Queen’s Award for International Trade, its second award for exports.

The Queen’s Awards – among the most prestigious for UK-based businesses – recognise achievements in a number of different categories, including International Trade, Innovation, Sustainable Development and Achievement in Enterprise Promotion. This year, as always, overseas-owned companies featured prominently. Many are UK subsidiaries of foreign-owned corporations, illustrating the increasingly global nature of UK business.

Medical equipment manufacturer KeyMed, for instance, is part of Olympus Corporation of Japan, while Hatsu Marine, a UK-flagged container shipping company which has increased its exports by two-and-a-half times in the past three years, is part of Evergreen Group of Taiwan. Both were recipients of an International Trade Award.

Other UK-based winners to be honoured in the export arena included vacuum cleaner maker Dyson, which is now a market leader in Japan, and the Edinburgh-based asset manager Baillie Gifford Overseas, which has flourishing operations in Japan, Australia and North America. Financial services companies as a whole did well in this year’s list of award winners, as did technology companies, reflecting Britain’s dynamism in these sectors. David Rowe, director of the University of Warwick Science Park, won this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Enterprise Promotion.


Motor industry stands up well to stiff competition
The British motor industry has had its share of bad news recently, with the collapse of MG Rover, Peugeot’s decision to close its factory at Ryton in Coventry and Vauxhall’s downsizing of its workforce at Ellesmere Port. However, according to Ian Robertson, chief executive of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the industry is probably in better shape than it has been for decades. In 2005 around 1.6 million cars were made in the UK, not far short of record 1970s production levels, and most of the country’s remaining car plants are profitable. Mr Robertson insists that the UK is a very good location for car-makers, with a large pool of skilled and flexible labour and excellent infrastructure, including an efficient motorway network and good access to ports. The government has improved the regulatory framework, while both companies and trades unions share a common goal of securing the industry’s future.

Car manufacturers across Europe have been shifting production to countries in eastern Europe (particularly the Czech Republic), attracted by significantly lower operating costs. However, the UK remains one of the largest European car manufacturers, producing 1.8 million vehicles in 2005, compared with 5.8 million in Germany, 3.5 million in France, 2.7 million in Spain and just over 1 million in Italy, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. The Czech Republic recorded a 35 per cent increase in production in 2005, but it still built only 605,000 cars, and Poland 540,000.

Almost half the cars made in the UK are produced by the Japanese groups Nissan, Toyota and Honda; Nissan’s plant in Sunderland in North East England is the most productive in Europe. US giants General Motors and Ford also have factories in the UK, as do Volkswagen and BMW of Germany which, respectively, make Bentleys at Crewe and Minis at Cowley in Oxford. Volkswagen has recently announced plans to open a new apprentice training facility at Nottingham in the East Midlands, which will be used to train around 1,000 technicians and staff a year.

Nissan and Mini are successful car manufacturers in the UK

BMW, the parent company of Rolls-Royce, is continuing to invest significant sums in the UK, putting $180 million into its Mini factory to raise production from 200,000 to 240,000 cars per year. It is also planning to introduce a new model with a larger interior, based on the iconic Morris Traveller. Fresh investment is going into new Rolls-Royce models, and the group builds all of its small BMW engines at its Hams Hall factory in Birmingham in the West Midlands. BMW reported its best ever quarter for the first three months of 2006, and predicted a pre-tax profit of $5 billion. Sales of BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce cars totalled 332,923, an increase of almost 14 per cent on the same period last year. A report from Oxford Economic Forecasting calculates that in 2004 BMW made a direct contribution of $1.8 billion to the UK economy, and an indirect contribution to GDP of $5 billion.

He said: “We’re working to put Ellesmere Port in the very best position going forward. We will be moving on towards the next generation of the Astra with improvements in the engineering and manufacturing process. … The Ellesmere Port plant is a very important part of the local economy – and our intention is to keep Ellesmere Port as an important part of the local economy.”

Meanwhile, specialist UK car-maker TVR has denied reports that it is to cease production and says instead that it plans to increase its output to 5,000 ultra-fast sports cars a year and “become another Aston-Martin”. The company, owned by Russian Nikolai Smolensky, has decided not to renew the lease on its current facilities at Lytham St Anne’s, near Blackpool in North West England, but is looking instead for a more efficient production base, either in Blackpool or elsewhere in the UK. The company makes its own engines and sales are currently confined to the UK because these do not meet the European Union’s Euro IV emission standard. However, TVR is working to meet the standards and is also planning to return to the North American market. Hit by competition from larger manufacturers, the company’s sales have dwindled from a peak of 2,000 a year in the late 1990s, but it still expects to sell 750-800 cars this year.

Elsewhere, the US conglomerate Carlisle has acquired the heavy vehicle off-highway brakes division of ArvinMeritor, based in Cwmbran, South Wales. It will use a 50,000 sq ft production unit in Mamhilad near Pontypool as a brake manufacture, assembly and test facility, and this will also serve as the HQ for its European off-highway brakes business. In the West Midlands, a new Motorcycle Industry Training Academy supported by Harley-Davidson has opened at North East Worcestershire College. The academy has been built with a $3 million grant from Advantage West Midlands and has been equipped by the US motorcycle giant. It will be Harley-Davidson’s only training centre in the UK and will serve the company’s staff from across Europe. It will also be available to local businesses, apprentices and students, providing training in engineering skills as well as in management development, leadership and customer services.


Booming biotech companies anticipate bumper year
Anglo-Swedish drug giant AstraZeneca is to buy UK biotechnology firm Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) for $1.3 billion. The deal follows a strategic alliance dating back to 2004, when AstraZeneca acquired 20 per cent of CAT, and marks its intention to establish a major international presence in the research and development of biological therapeutics, using the UK as a base. CAT uses human antibodies in the development of new drugs by looking at gene sequences, and has already received global recognition for its development of the drug Humira, used for treating rheumatoid arthritis. AstraZeneca is the third largest drugs developer in Europe and the UK’s biggest biotechnology firm.

A US company, Serologicals Corporation of Atlanta, Georgia, has completed a $7 million takeover of another Cambridge-based firm, Cytomox Ltd, which is a leading provider of ion channel cell lines and drug discovery services. The UK’s biotechnology sector is the largest in Europe and pharmaceutical companies spent $6 billion on R&D in 2004, according to the Department of Health. Twenty-four of the world’s 100 top-selling medicines in 2003 were developed in the UK, with only the US claiming a higher share. The UK is also home to Europe’s largest concentration of science parks, many of them concentrated around Cambridge in Eastern England.

Invitrogen Corporation, a California-based provider of life sciences services, is to invest $31 million in an expansion of its existing base in Scotland, establishing its European headquarters there, along with a global research centre. The company will amalgamate existing manufacturing and product development sites at locations across Scotland into a new facility at Inchinnan Business Park in Renfrewshire.

The Scottish Executive supported the move, which will create 45 new jobs and safeguard another 555, with a grant of $8 million.  Invitrogen provides technologies for disease research, drug discovery and commercial bio-production to laboratories around the world.

A new centre for genetics research in healthcare has been opened at the North West Genetics Knowledge Park in Manchester. The $7 million Nowgen Centre is a collaboration between regional funding bodies and a number of hospitals and universities in the North West. As well as research, it will focus on raising awareness of how genetics can be used to enhance healthcare. In the South East a new organisation, the South East Health Technologies Alliance, has been set up to channel funding to small and medium-sized biotech and pharmaceuticals firms in the region. The South East has the highest concentration of health technology companies outside the US, with around 1,000 companies (including big names such as Pfizer and Genzyme) employing some 50,000 people.

Life sciences companies also seem to be back in favour with investors. In 2005 a total of 18 companies floated their shares on stock markets, raising a total of $468 million. However, in 2006 twelve companies had already listed by the beginning of May, generating $360 million and raising expectations of a bumper year, according to investment bank Evolution. Ten of the 12 companies floated on the UK’s smaller Aim market, but two larger companies, Renovo and Optos, have successfully listed on the main market, achieving market capitalisations of $277 million and $297 million respectively.


Green light for new transport schemes
Two major transport infrastructure schemes have been given the go-ahead by the government. Final approval has been granted for Hutchison Ports (UK)’s proposal for a new container port at Bathside Bay at Harwich in Essex, following a public inquiry. Provisional approval was granted in December 2005. The Hong Kong-owned company will build a new terminal consisting of a 1.4km quay wall. The government has also given its backing to a second crossing over the River Mersey near Liverpool in North West England. The Mersey Gateway scheme will provide a key transport link that will aid economic growth in the region, according to its backers.

A new National Traffic Control Centre has opened on the M5 motorway at Quinton in Birmingham, West Midlands. The $280 million centre will operate 24 hours a day, collecting information on road and traffic conditions across 4,500 miles of motorways and trunk roads. According to the Highway Agency, it will make roads safer and help drivers to plan their journeys better. Real-time information is gathered via a national network of 3,750 road sensors and 700 CCTV cameras, in addition to reports from Highway Agency officers, the police, local authorities and other agencies. Information will be provided to drivers via the Highways Agency website, an automated telephone service and electronic roadside message boards.

At Stansted Airport to the north of London, business-class carrier Maxjet has extended its low-cost direct services to the US, adding a four-days-a-week Washington service to the six-days-a-week service it already operates to New York’s JFK Airport. Maxjet operates Boeing 767-200 airliners with interiors configured to offer 102 business-class seats, and round-trip fares to Washington Dulles International start at $1,750 including taxes. The airline, which began flying from Stansted last November, is reportedly considering a further expansion of its services to Boston and West Coast destinations such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose. Another all business-class carrier, Eos, is operating services from Stansted to JFK, while a third start-up company, Silverjet, is hoping to enter the market, running services between London Luton and New York Newark.

London Ashford Airport at Lydd in Kent, South East England has embarked on a redevelopment plan that promises to transform it into a major regional airport. So far $26.3 million has been spent to improve facilities at the airport, with the aim of boosting its capacity to 2 million passengers a year by 2014. Improvements have already been carried out to runways, instrument landing systems, fire and emergency services and car parking areas; further phases will involve the construction of a new terminal building and an extended runway. The developers, London Ashford Airport Ltd – a wholly owned subsidiary of FAL Holdings of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – also plan to build a luxury hotel on an adjoining golf course.

In North West England, Blackpool International Airport has opened its newly refurbished terminal – which, after a $3.5 million refurbishment, is now capable of handling 2 million passengers a year. The upgrade forms part of the Blackpool Masterplan, a major regeneration effort spearheaded by the Lancashire Economic Partnership. The airport offers services to 20 UK and European destinations; Jet2.com, a low-cost airline based in the North of England, is to begin offering flights to Amsterdam and Faro, Portugal from 29 October.

RDA Yorkshire Forward is to invest $12 million in an aviation training academy – the first of its kind in the UK – based at Robin Hood International Airport near Doncaster in South Yorkshire. The academy, based in a 55,000 sq ft hangar near the runway and the airport’s terminal building, will house specialised engineering and aviation equipment, including working aircraft. It will offer a wide range of employer support and training, ranging from training for cabin crew to aircraft maintenance. In Plymouth in South West England, meanwhile, a new high-tech training centre has been opened with the aim of improving skills in the region’s maritime construction industry. The Marine Training Composites School in Plympton, part of the $3 million Plymouth Marine Skills Centre, will offer training in boat building and refitting, using the latest technologies in fibreglass and composite laminates.


Big boost for the big screen
British films have doubled their share of the global box office in the past two years, according to new figures from the UK Film Council and Variety magazine. In 2005, the 10 best-performing British films grossed $2.6 billion worldwide, while the top 20 grossed $3.3 billion. The most successful film of 2005 was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which earned $808 million worldwide; it was followed by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Kingdom of Heaven and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Most of the top productions involved US funding and UK films with US co-production status claimed a 15.8 per cent market share in the US. Only one of the year’s top 20 biggest-earning films – The Constant Gardener – was made without backing from the US.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, visiting the South of France for the annual Cannes Film Festival in May, said the figures were “a fantastic success story” for the British film industry. “This is, by general consent, the result of the combined efforts of a favourable tax regime but also of broader efforts to promote British culture through film,” she observed. Ms Jowell said she believed that a new simplified tax credit system that is due to come into law later this year would lead to further growth in investment in UK film-making.

US director Woody Allen meanwhile has abandoned plans to shoot his next film in Paris and instead will come to London this summer for his third consecutive project. Cost was the main reason for the decision, but artistic freedom, tax breaks and even the quality of the (sometimes) grey London light were also factors. This will be the third film Allen has shot in the UK capital, following Match Point, which starred Scarlett Johansson and Jonathon Rhys-Meyers, and Scoop, which is yet to be released. The new film will feature the Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams and is promised to be a “unique story written specially for London”. The city is experiencing something of a film-making boom and initiatives introduced by Film London, the planning agency for film and media, have seen the number of shooting days in the capital increase by 30 per cent over the past two years. Films worth $855 million were shot in the city last year, including V for Vendetta, Basic Instinct 2 and parts of The Da Vinci Code.

Yorkshire Forward has announced an $18 million scheme to encourage the region’s growing film, television and games industry, the largest in the UK outside London. The award, the biggest ever of its kind, has been made to Screen Yorkshire, the regional body charged with nurturing the industries locally. It will be used to promote the region to film-makers and games developers; to encourage young people to tell their stories through the medium of film; and to help companies in the region make use of new technologies, such as interactive programming broadcast over TV, internet and mobile platforms. Since it was set up, Screen Yorkshire has attracted $54 million in inward investment to the region and created 500 jobs, while its short film programme has produced two entries nominated for BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards, in 2004 and 2005.

The South West of England RDA has also set up a scheme to support the creative industries. The regional capital Bristol is home to the Oscar-winning Aardman Animations, creators of the popular Wallace and Gromit characters, and it is hoped that the new Creative Enterprise Gateway scheme will help other local creative companies to flourish. With funding of $414,000 over two years, the initiative will support a variety of companies, from arts and crafts businesses to advertising and architecture firms. A series of events will be held in June to publicise the scheme.


Workers get older – but wiser…?
More than half the jobs created in the UK in the past year were filled by people above the state pension age, according to the ONS. The number of ‘pensionable’ workers – men aged over 65 and women over 60 – in employment increased to 1.13 million in the three months to the end of February, up 85,000 on the corresponding period a year earlier. The rise in the number of older workers reflects the fact people are living longer, as well as the financial pressures created by pensions shortfalls and a growing willingness by employers to take on older staff, according to employers’ organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Employers’ Forum on Age. Employers are finding that older people are physically and mentally fitter than in previous generations, and supermarket chains such as Tesco and J Sainsbury have led the way in recruiting older staff.

A study by recruitment firm Office Angels confirms that attitudes to older workers are changing. A survey of 1,600 UK employers found that 66 per cent prioritised relevant abilities and the right attitude above age when taking on new recruits. Some 40 per cent of respondents said that attitudes were changing and that companies looked more favourably on experienced workers than they used to. Some 19 per cent of businesses now offer ‘age incentives’, including part-time employment, to encourage older workers to continue in their jobs. New regulations outlawing discrimination on the grounds of age come into force on 1 October.

One area where age distinctions are still apparent, however, is business etiquette. A survey by communications consultancy the Aziz Corporation shows, for example, that older managers are far less tolerant than their younger colleagues of swearing. The study revealed that 74 per cent of managers in their 50s find swearing by staff annoying, while only 43 per cent of managers in their 30s think that is unacceptable to swear in a business meeting, reflecting a decline in the formality of business language. What gets the goat of managers today is people who bullsh*t: 66 per cent find bullsh*tting by colleagues annoying, while only 37 per cent have similar objections to swearing.

In other signs of changing times, the research revealed that only 39 per cent of managers now think it acceptable to drink alcohol, such as a glass of wine, at a business lunch – indeed, 57 per cent believe it is acceptable to not even offer alcohol to guests. It is also less acceptable to smoke after lunch than to interrupt the meal to take a mobile phone call: 72 per cent of managers thought smoking should be avoided, compared with 62 per cent who thought the phone should go unanswered. Indeed, 79 per cent of managers believe that it is unacceptable for staff to smoke immediately outside the office, while half think smoking should be banned anywhere on company premises, including car parks. Attitudes to phone use differ with age: none of the respondents in their 20s thought it was completely unacceptable to take a mobile phone call over lunch. However, none of those in their 60s thought it was perfectly acceptable, and 46 per cent felt it was completely unacceptable.


Regional news
London is overtaking New York as the world’s leading financial centre, as Wall Street becomes a more complex and costly place to do business, according to David Brewer, the Lord Mayor of London. Speaking on a visit to the Scottish capital Edinburgh, Brewer suggested that stiffer US regulation and immigration laws in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and corporate financial scandals such as Enron were the reasons behind an exodus of brokers and dealers from New York to London, where it is easier to do business. As evidence, he cites the desire of the New York Stock Exchange and the technology exchange Nasdaq to acquire control of the London Stock Exchange, which would give them a foothold outside the US regulatory system. At the same time, Brewer stressed that it was not the City of London alone that deserved credit, but financial services companies across the UK. The sector is especially strong in Edinburgh; almost one in ten jobs in Scotland are in financial or business services, and the sector has recorded growth of 35 per cent over the past five years.

A new survey by IBM’s Institute for Business Value and the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests that over the next decade London will become an even stronger magnet for workers both from the US and from Eastern Europe. US companies and executives, it concluded, would continue to “invade” London as they sought to escape the burden of the Sarbanes-Oxley financial disclosure rules and other regulations, which currently take up 20-30 per cent of their time in the US. Back office work would continue to be transferred to Eastern Europe (and elsewhere), where costs were cheaper, but more highly skilled employees with specialist financial and actuarial knowledge would move to London from Eastern European countries. All this would mean greater competition for jobs; the best traders would continue to command big bonuses, but these would be available to fewer people. The IBV/EIU survey interviewed 402 executives at 296 of the world’s largest financial institutions.

EON PreMedia, a multimedia production house based in New Delhi, India, is to establish a strategic base in London, as it targets markets in continental Europe and the United States. The company, which hopes to create 400 jobs over two years, is an integrated production house, providing publishers and marketing companies with design, content management and pre-press services for print and digital media. It was attracted to London because of the UK’s well-established publishing industry, its skilled management and its strategic geographical location. The move was enabled by Global Entrepreneurs Programme (GEP) offered by UK Trade and Investment, which helped to initiate dialogue with business partners and introduced EON PreMedia to investors and advisers in the UK and in North America. “As the convergence of print, Web and cellular platforms gains momentum, the move to London will allow us to capitalise on new opportunities much more swiftly,” said the company’s CEO, Suveen Sahib.

The Tour de France, the world’s most famous cycling race, is to return to the UK in 2007, with two days in London and South East England getting the competition under way. The race’s Grand Départ will begin with the Prologue in central London on Saturday 7 July, followed by Stage One on Sunday 8 July. From London, the riders will travel into Kent, passing through Gravesend, Dartford, Medway, Rochester, Tunbridge Wells and Ashford, before finishing in the historic city of Canterbury. When the Tour last visited the region in 1994 it attracted huge interest, and local business leaders hope that this time visitors will generate up to $126 million in revenue for bars, restaurants and hotels. Before then, the Tour of Britain is also scheduled to pass through the county later this summer, between 29 August and 3 September.

Following its $15 billion acquisition of UK industrial gases company BOC, German engineering group Linde is to move significant parts of its business to the UK. The Wiesbaden-based company will keep its main engineering and R&D functions in Germany, but the UK arm of the operation will take the lead role in communications, investor relations and marketing. These functions will be centred on BOC’s HQ in Windlesham, Surrey in South East England and its operational centre in nearby Guildford. BOC executives will fill senior posts within the combined group, which will conduct its day-to-day business in English. The move is the first step in the creation of a truly global company, according to Linde’s chief executive, Wolfgang Reitzle.

A German high-tech company, Leipzig-based itCampus, plans to open a new international headquarters in North Tyneside in North East England. itCampus specialises in telecoms software solutions for the call centre industry and will be targeting the UK market with its predictive dialling technology, which it claims allows call centre staff to double their working capacity. The software is being marketed as a virtual call centre agent, under the brand name.

Tangoe, a US provider of telecommunications expense management (TEM) software and services, is opening its first UK office in Manchester, North West England. The new base will allow it to support its expanding UK customer base and will give it access to the rest of Europe; it already has customers in Germany and the Benelux countries. The proximity of Manchester International Airport was an important factor in the company’s decision to locate in the city, it said, “as it offers excellent connections with all of Europe’s major business locations”.

Rolls-Royce has formally opened a new $13 million facility in Barnoldswick in North West England. The factory manufactures a range of specialised aero-engine components, including stators, vanes, solid fan blades, and combustion cases and liners. The investment is one of four modernisation projects undertaken by Rolls-Royce around the UK, aimed at reducing costs and ensuring that its factories operate at world-best levels of competitiveness.

A new $108 million business park on the outskirts of Barnsley in South Yorkshire will offer up to 450,000 sq ft of office and industrial space and has the potential to create up to 800 jobs, according to its developers. The mixed-use Capitol Park Barnsley will include a hotel, pub and a restaurant and will have easy access to the M1 motorway. Work is nearing completion on the speculative first phase, which includes Grade A offices ranging in size from 4,000 sq ft to 30,000 sq ft; these will be ready for occupation from July. Elsewhere in Barnsley, a 19,000 sq ft industrial development has been completed at the Burton Road Business Park at Monk Bretton. The scheme consists of 14 small industrial units, four of which are still available.

Burton Road Business Park, Monk Bretton, Barnsley

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