May 2006

News

UK maintains European lead in ICT development
The UK remains the fastest-growing ICT market in Western Europe, with growth of 4.2 per cent expected in 2006, up from 3.5 per cent in 2005, according to the 2006 report from the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO). EITO predicts that the UK will buck the European trend, with overall market growth expected to slow to 3.2 per cent this year compared with 3.6 per cent in 2005. Within the UK market, the software sector is predicted to grow at an above-average 6.1 per cent and IT services at 5.1 per cent, while IT hardware will grow at 3.9 per cent and telecoms at 3.6 per cent. Europe accounts for 33.6 per cent of the global ICT market and, within this market, the UK has the third highest per capita spend on ICT, behind Sweden and Denmark. Globally, UK growth outperforms the US (3.9 per cent) and Japan (1.1 per cent), though it cannot match the rest of the world – including China and India – which last year grew at a rate of 6.8 per cent.

The US has regained its position at the top of the Networked Readiness Index, part of The Global Information Technology Report (GITR) published by the World Economic Forum and INSEAD. Now in its fifth year, GITR is seen as the world’s most respected assessment of the impact of ICT on the development and competitiveness of nations. This year it assesses 115 economies worldwide, examining their ICT readiness in terms of their overall macroeconomic, regulatory and infrastructure environment; the readiness of businesses, individuals and governments to use and benefit from ICT; and actual usage of the latest technologies.

The US topped the index for the third time in five years, underlining its position as a leader in innovation and a technological powerhouse. The UK ranked tenth, ahead of all the other major European economies outside Scandinavia. Singapore was second, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Canada, Taiwan, Sweden and Switzerland. Australia ranked 15th, Japan 16th, India 40th and China 50th.

Another survey, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, shows that the UK is above both the OECD and EU15 averages in the extent of its broadband roll-out. Measured by broadband use per capita, the UK came 12th of all the OECD countries, with a figure of 15.9 per cent. Of the other major EU economies, France was close behind on 15.2 per cent, but Germany, Italy and Spain lagged behind, on 13 per cent, 11.9 per cent and 11.7 per cent respectively. The most web-savvy country was Iceland, with 26.7 per cent broadband use, beating long-time leader South Korea into second place with 25.4 per cent. However, on sheer numbers of users, South Korea was way ahead, with 12.2 million compared with Iceland’s 78,000. The next most wired countries were the Netherlands with 25.3 per cent, Denmark with 25 per cent and Switzerland with 23.1 per cent, while the biggest volume of users was in the US, which had more than 49 million.

The Institute of Advanced Telecommunications (IAT) at the University of Swansea in South Wales is teaming up with a number of industrial partners to research and design the next generation of ICT networks, with a particular emphasis on internet protocol (IP)-based systems. The $35 million HIPNet (Heterogeneous IP Networks) project will involve international partners such as Ericsson of Sweden and US company Freescale.


New projects signal big expansion in mobile internet
An ambitious project is under way to provide wi-fi access across the whole area of the City of London. The project, a collaboration between the Corporation of London and wi-fi network operator The Cloud, will be rolled out over the next six months and will use 150 base stations to provide access speeds between 512Kbps and 3Mbps, depending on the number of users logged on. Initially the scheme will support 20,000 users but more capacity will be added if it proves a success. As well as appealing to business users and tourists, it is thought likely that the service will be used by municipal workers, such as Corporation employees, traffic wardens and health inspectors. The Cloud is also rolling out wi-fi services at airports, railway stations, hotels and coffee shops across the UK. The latest location is London’s Stansted Airport, where all major public seating and retail areas are covered. Users can purchase network time using a system of vouchers that are valid across the company’s entire network.

City of London

Meanwhile US computer giant Intel is teaming up with UK telecoms provider Pipex to launch new broadband services in UK cities using WiMax technology. WiMax (wireless interoperability for microwave access) is able to provide internet access over longer distances than wi-fi, claiming better coverage with fewer aerials. Intel will invest $25 million in a new joint venture, Pipex Wireless, which will hold one of only two 3.6 gigahertz spectrum licenses to provide WiMax services throughout the UK. The company plans to launch WiMax services in London and Manchester in 2007, expanding to another eight cities by 2008 and eventually covering the UK’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. Intel and Pipex predict the new services will lead to ‘an explosion’ in mobile computing.


UK a world leader in research and innovation
The UK’s research base remains second only to that of the US in terms of its achievements, productivity and efficiency, according to a new study from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The study looked at papers published in academic journals and the frequency with which they were cited by other researchers, as a measure of the impact they made in their field. It revealed that in 2004 the UK produced 9 per cent of the world’s scientific papers and claimed a 12 per cent share of citations. It also increased its share of the world’s most influential papers, from 12.9 per cent to 13.2 per cent, despite the rise of other global players such as China. The UK was ranked second in the world in seven separate scientific disciplines – biological, clinical, pre-clinical and health, environmental, humanities, social sciences and business – and third in another, mathematics. It accounted for 10 per cent of all PhD degrees awarded in OECD countries.

The total number of science and engineering graduates in the UK increased by 57 per cent between 1997 and 2004 and is expected to rise by a further 61 per cent to reach 3.2 million by 2014, according to the DTI. Quoting figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, trade and industry minister Alan Johnson pointed out that the number of first degrees in science, engineering and technology taken in the UK rose from 87,435 in 1995 to 124,860 in 2004. He acknowledged, however, that the trend was uneven, with large increases recorded in the number of graduates in biomedical sciences and in computing, but declines in the physical sciences and in engineering and technology. With some universities currently cutting back on courses such as chemistry, efforts are being made to recruit more science teachers in schools to ensure a future supply of science and engineering graduates.

Mr Johnson has also announced $140 million in funding for UK companies to help support innovation in technology, in the latest round of the government’s $648 million Technology Programme. The funding will support collaborative R&D in seven key technology areas: design engineering and advanced manufacturing; electronics and photonics; emerging energy technologies; sustainable production and consumption; bioscience and healthcare; advanced materials; and ICT. A series of partnering events and briefings for applicant companies will be held around the country in May.

A new initiative has been launched to help boost innovation in the UK’s $74 billion chemicals industry. The Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network (CIKTN) is a knowledge-sharing network that will link businesses, universities and technology organisations. It will help organisations to find information about research facilities and sources of funding and will give companies easier access to new markets, technologies and resources. The CIKTN is one of 19 Knowledge Transfer Networks set up with government funding; others include networks for photonics, bioscience, healthcare technologies and food processing.


Bioscience goes from strength to strength
A new partnership between business, research and technology organisations and universities has been launched to boost the global competitiveness of bioscience in the UK. The Bioscience for Business Knowledge Transfer Network, supported by funding of $5.25 million over three years from the DTI, will help to bring cutting-edge science to the factory floor. The UK’s bioscience sector is the largest in Europe and globally is second only to the US, with some 455 dedicated biotechnology companies employing 22,400 people. In 2003 UK biotech companies spent $2.2 billion on R&D, while the industry earned revenues of around $6.3 billion. The new network will integrate three key sectors, the industrial biotechnology, plant and marine sectors.

The University of Liverpool is to host the world’s first interdisciplinary centre for research into zoonosis – infections passed from animals to humans. Some 75 per cent of infectious diseases emerging worldwide are animal-borne; the new centre will investigate recent deadly examples such as avian influenza, BSE/vCJD and SARS. The university, which has a unique combination of strengths in the biological sciences, medicine, veterinary science and tropical medicine, is being supported by a grant of $3 million from the North West Development Agency.

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine meanwhile is to double in size, with the construction of a new Centre for Tropical and Infectious Diseases. With $31.5 million in public funding secured for construction costs, the international centre is due for completion in 2007. Its focus will be on developing new drugs to treat deadly diseases, and in particular on developing new insecticides to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito. The centre has already been awarded $50 million by the Gates Foundation to carry out malaria research, as well as more than $17 million for malaria-related projects by the European Commission.

Also in the North West, the University of Manchester has been granted a further $2.5 million to help develop a world-class UK Centre for Tissue Regeneration (UKCTR). Working with the University of Liverpool, the National Health Centre and five industrial partners including AstraZeneca, the centre will help to develop small-calibre artificial arteries, skin repair products, cartilage regeneration and nerve repair techniques. Manchester is also the site of the UK Biobank, which has begun recruiting volunteers for the largest ever study into the causes of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma and Alzheimer’s. The Biobank will store DNA samples and medical data from 500,000 people aged 45-69 and will use the information to study how genes, lifestyle and environment affect the risk of disease.

A 100,000 sq ft regional wet lab incubator centre is to be opened in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, Eastern England. Bio Park Hertfordshire, supported by $14 million from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA), will provide specialist facilities and support for life science companies. It will be operated by EEDA and the University of Hertfordshire, using laboratory premises recently vacated by Swiss healthcare products company Roche, which has moved its 1,200 employees to a new complex in nearby Welwyn Garden City.


Britain’s flexible workforce helps to boost economic performance
A new report from the DTI shows the UK continuing to perform well on major economic indicators in comparison with its main European rivals. The report, UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators, shows that over the past decade the UK has been the only G7 member to keep pace with the US on productivity – measured by output per worker – and that it has halved the previous productivity gap on France and closed the gap with Germany. The report highlights UK strengths such as a solid science base and a long period of macroeconomic stability, which has provided a firm foundation for growth. GDP growth and interest rates are significantly less volatile than in the US, France and Germany, for instance.

In addition, the UK enjoys a light regulatory framework and high levels of entrepreneurial activity, although R&D spending remains relatively low compared with other countries. The UK workforce performs well on higher skills levels, with a relatively high proportion of the population having degree-level qualifications. The UK is also very open to international trade and investment, according to the report, with stocks of foreign direct investment substantially higher than those of European competitors and foreign trade accounting for a high proportion of its GDP.

Another survey, by the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, shows that a higher proportion of British companies operate flexible working hours than companies elsewhere in Europe, although some continental employers are more advanced in the range of schemes they offer. The study, which looked at 21,000 public and private sector organisations in 21 European countries, found that 56 per cent of UK companies with more than 10 employees operated flexible hours, ranking the country fourth behind Latvia, Sweden and Finland. By comparison, 51 per cent of employers in Germany operated such schemes, 48 per cent in France, 43 per cent in Spain and 40 per cent in Italy. Greece, Portugal and Cyprus were the least flexible, with 29 per cent, 23 per cent and 17 per cent respectively.

The UK ranked first in allowing employees to switch from full-time to part-time work, but it performed less well on flexible arrangements such as working-time accounts, which allow workers to accumulate hours that can be taken later as time off. Only 10 per cent of UK employers operated schemes of this sort that allowed workers to take off more than one day at a time, compared with 20 per cent in a number of other countries. More organisations in the UK relied on employees working overtime than elsewhere in Europe, and they were more likely to reward them with extra pay than with time off, found the study. According to 61 per cent of managers surveyed across the EU (50 per cent in the UK), flexible working produced higher job satisfaction, while 54 per cent said it helped in adapting working hours to the workload.

Age discrimination is to be ended in the UK workplace, with new regulations coming into force in October that will apply to every business and employee. The new rules will ban age discrimination in terms of recruitment, promotion and training; ban unjustified retirement ages of below 65; and remove the current age limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights. They will also give employees the right to request working beyond retirement age and require employers to give at least six months notice to employees of their intended retirement date. The government wants to make better use of the talents of older workers, but emphasises that it remains the right of the worker to choose when to retire. However, it plans to review all retirement ages in five years’ time, with the possibility of scrapping them altogether.

The number of trade union members in the UK declined by 1.9 per cent year-on-year to 6.4 million in autumn 2005, but union density rose by 0.2 percentage points to 29 per cent of all people in employment, according Trade Union Membership 2005, a publication from the Office for National Statistics. Union density among men fell by 0.3 percentage points to 28.2 per cent, but this was offset by a strong rise in union density among female workers, up 0.9 percentage points to 29.9 per cent of employees. Almost three in five (58.6 per cent) public sector employees were members of a union in autumn 2005, but fewer than one in five (17.2 per cent) of employees in the private sector. The highest union density was found in Northern Ireland (40.4 per cent of employees), followed by Wales (34.3 per cent), Scotland (33.7 per cent) and England (27.9 per cent).


New renewable energy sources go into production
The UK’s first biodiesel plant – and the biggest in Europe – has begun trial production at Seal Sands on Teesside in North East England. The $75.3 million plant, run by alternative energy company Biofuels, plans to produce 250,000 tonnes a year of biodiesel made from renewable crops, and will go into commercial operation some time in the coming months. Using licensed technology from Austrian firm Energea, it will employ a process called trans-esterification to make biodiesel and glycerine from palm, soya and rape oil. A European Union directive stipulates that 5.75 per cent of EU transportation fuel should come from non-fossil sources by 2010, and the UK government has set a renewables target of 5 per cent by that date. Half the expected output of the Seals Sands plant has already been committed to customers in the UK and Europe, and Biofuels plans to build a second plant once the first is up and running.

Also on Teesside, a second alternative energy firm, D1 Oils, plans to set up a biodiesel refinery on land in Middlesbrough formerly used by the iron and steel industry. The $12.3 million project will have an initial production capacity of 32,000 tonnes a year, at first making biodiesel from vegetable oils, particularly soya oil. However, its long-term strategy is to use the fast-growing jatropha tree as its feedstock, and it is setting up a number of joint venture planting deals in Africa, India and Southeast Asia to supply its facilities.

US company Ocean Power Technologies and Fred Olsen Ltd of Norway are to collaborate with UK-based Ocean Prospect Ltd to build the world’s first wave energy farm. The $26.3 million Wave Hub project will be located off the east coast of Cornwall in South West England, and will begin generating electricity within the next few years, with the potential to power 14,000 homes. The announcement coincides with a report by The Carbon Trust which says that, with sufficient investment, up to 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs could eventually be supplied by wave and tidal stream resources. The report estimated that the sector could meet 3 per cent of the UK’s total electricity demand by 2020.

Ocean Prospect Pelamis & Barrow Offshore Wind Project

The first offshore wind farm in North West England has begun generating electricity. The Barrow Offshore Wind project, which is located off the coast of Cumbria and will have 30 turbines, is a joint venture between UK energy company Centrica (the parent company of British Gas) and Danish energy group DONG. It will provide electricity to 65,000 homes when completed, with full commercial operation scheduled for the middle of the year.

In Wales, a new group has been launched to promote the development of the photovoltaic (PV) industry. The Welsh Opto-Electronic Forum’s Photovoltaic Group will work with both the public and private sectors to strengthen the principality’s involvement in the industry and to attract new investment. Wales is home to two of the UK’s main manufacturers of PV products – Sharp at Wrexham and ICP Solar at Bridgend – and the largest PV installation of its kind in Europe, at Technium OpTIC at St Asaph.

WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Programme) has opened its Waste Minimisation Innovation Fund to new applicants. The $14 million fund is open to organisations with innovative ideas for minimising packaging or domestic food waste, and which have a reasonable chance of being adopted by retailers. More information at: www.wrap.org.uk. Meanwhile the government has published its Climate Change Programme 2006 (the first comprehensive review of renewable energy needs since 2000) and the DTI Microgeneration Strategy, Our Energy Challenge – Power from the People. Both documents are downloadable from the Defra website, www.defra.gov.uk.


Japanese firms take the lead in UK car industry
This year, for the first time, Japanese car manufacturers are set to make more than half of all new cars produced in the UK, according to analysis by the Financial Times. The plants owned by Toyota in Derbyshire, Honda in Swindon and Nissan in Sunderland all plan to increase their output in 2006, while another big foreign-owned brand – Ford’s Land Rover plant in Solihull – intends to expand significantly. The three Japanese manufacturers are already the UK’s largest employers in the volume car sector. All three plants were established in the 1980s and are now highly profitable, due to the introduction of ‘lean production’ methods and a focus on European styling. Toyota expects to increase its production to 285,000 vehicles this year from 264,000 in 2005; Honda will ramp up output towards its capacity of 250,000 units from 187,000 a year ago; and Nissan will add another 5,000 units to take its output to 320,000 cars in 2006.

Toyota has opened a new purpose-built training centre at its Burnaston plant to provide training in production and maintenance skills to employees of all its European manufacturing operations. The $20 million pan-European Global Production Centre (E-GPC) will train up to 1,000 workers each year from the company’s eight European plants, located in the UK, France, Poland, Turkey, Portugal and the Czech Republic. Toyota opened its first GPC in Japan in 2003 and has opened new facilities as its global manufacturing operations have expanded. A North American centre opened earlier this year and an Asia-Pacific branch is due to open shortly. Across Europe, the manufacturer recorded its ninth consecutive year of record sales in 2005, and this year has set a European sales target of one million vehicles.

Nanjing Automobile, the Chinese firm that bought the MG brand, has renewed its lease on part of the UK firm’s former plant at Longbridge and has signalled its intention to resume car production there. It wants to begin building the MG TF sports car in 2007, employing between 600 and 1,000 workers. The lease runs for a period of 33 years, although Nanjing Auto has a six-month get out clause on the contract. The premises incorporate a 105-acre area of the former South Works site, including two car assembly plants, a paint shop and offices.

A consortium led by UK engineering consultancy firm Prodrive has tabled a planning proposal for one of the world’s largest R&D facilities for the automobile and motor sport industries. The plan centres on a 200-acre site on a former airfield at Fen End, Honiley in Warwickshire in the West Midlands, which is already used as a test track. The $350 million project would house a number of specialist high-tech automotive companies and would also be home to the new Prodrive Formula One racing team, which is set to launch in 2008. If approved, say its backers, the scheme would have the potential to create up to 1,000 skilled jobs. The complex would also sit at the heart of a ‘motor sport industry valley’, with marques such as Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin produced nearby.


RDAs to sharpen focus of business assistance schemes
The number of business support schemes operating at local, regional and national levels is to be streamlined down from more than 3,000 currently to just 100 by 2010. The initiative, announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in his March budget, will be led by the DTI, in partnership with the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), other government departments and local bodies. The DTI has already reduced its own business support programmes from 150 to a suite of eight, more sharply focused products. These include the Small Firms Loan Guarantee, which helps more than 6,000 small firms each year to raise finance; the Knowledge Transfer Partnership, which has established 1,300 partnerships since its launch in 2003; and Collaborative Research and Development, which has invested more than $437 million in some 350 emerging technology projects.

A new Urban Regeneration Company (URC) has been launched for Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth in Eastern England. 1st East aims to generate economic growth and create jobs in the two towns by coordinating public and private sector initiatives in their brownfield and waterfront areas. Currently many of these locations are rundown or under-utilised, but the URC – the 21st to be launched in the UK – believes there is potential for mixed-use developments that will include business, residential and leisure facilities. The East of England Development Agency (EEDA) meanwhile has awarded $1.7 million in funding to St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge to assist new high-tech companies in the region. The programme will provide specialist support to ensure that companies are ‘investor ready’; will help businesses in the region develop ties with EU companies through its Innovation Relay Centre; and will appoint an international relations officer to find overseas partners for innovative companies based in the region.

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) has allocated $10.3 million to help develop the Salford Innovation Forum Centre at the Salford Innovation Park. The new centre will incorporate 53,700 sq ft of managed office space, including an advanced ICT network, for knowledge-based business start-ups and SMEs. It is expected to create up to 55 new businesses, which will benefit from technology transfer from the higher education institutions based at the site, including the Salford University campus.

NWDA has also contributed $8.75 million to a major redevelopment scheme for the port area of Barrow in Cumbria. The investment will pay for the purchase of 100 acres of land currently owned by Associated British Ports, and paves the way for a $105 million masterplan for the town that includes a new technology-based business park, together with residential, hotel and leisure facilities that may include a marina and a watersports complex. At the same time, it is assisting with a $25.6 million scheme to develop the commercial, leisure and tourism potential of the port at nearby Workington. The first year of the ten-year programme will focus on refurbishing handling facilities at the port. Both development schemes are being administered by the West Lakes Renaissance programme.


Creative London looks to the future
London has been recognised as the ‘European City of the Future’ by fDi magazine, the leading magazine for business globalisation and investment promotion published by the Financial Times Group. The awards judging panel deemed that, with the 2012 Olympics and the Thames Gateway project, London had the greatest potential for attracting international business in the coming years. In another endorsement, London took the top spot in the Best Human Resources category. The magazine’s bi-annual awards, for European cities and regions and their investment agencies, also recognised the capital’s inward investment agency Think London as one of the best of its kind in Europe, awarding it the runner-up spot for ‘Best FDI Promotion’, out of a field of 89.

Think London meanwhile has opened its first office in the US, as part of an international campaign to attract more foreign direct investment to the UK capital. The office in New York City underlines the importance of US investment to London, where US companies are the largest foreign investors. The city is now home to 6,700 US companies, a rise of 300 per cent since 2000, and they contribute $29.8 billion annually to the city’s economy, equivalent to 10 per cent of its total GDP. New York and the north-eastern seaboard of the US represent about 35 per cent of US investment into London, with most projects coming from the IT, business and financial services sectors. Within the past year alone, Think London has helped more than 50 US companies to set up operations in London, including Delta Airlines, biopharma giant Amgen and insurer Hartford Life.

Think London is also planning to open an office in Beijing, as ties between the UK and China continue to strengthen. In April London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone led a delegation to China to help forge links between London and Beijing in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics (London, of course, hosts the Olympic Games in 2012). At the same time, a fresh batch of Chinese companies have announced investments in London. Hutchinson China MediTech (Chi-Med), one of China’s leading suppliers of herbal medicines, plans to raise $70 million by investing on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), following the lead of another traditional medicine supplier, China Biotech, which listed on the Ofex exchange earlier in the year. CNOOC, China’s third largest oil company and its biggest offshore oil and gas producer, plans to open its European headquarters in London. It will be joined by Mindray, a manufacturer of medical equipment, which also intends to establish a European base in the capital.

US luggage maker Samsonite is to establish its global headquarters in London after deciding that the UK capital is the world’s most creative city – ahead of the likes of Paris, New York, Barcelona, Milan and Madrid. The Boston-based firm, which makes two-thirds of its sales outside the US, has leased a 20,000 sq ft building at Heathrow Airport that will house about 50 people, including more than a dozen designers. Heathrow will allow the company’s executives easy access to a global travel network. Samsonite will also retain satellite design studios in Boston, Belgium and Tokyo. “London today is certainly fashion-wise, design-wise and creative-wise the most exciting [city],” said Marcello Bottoli, the company’s chief executive.

Another aspect of the capital’s creativity is its strength in the fast-growing video games industry, which nationally was worth an estimated $2.4 billion in 2005. The UK is the most important development centre in Europe for the industry, and in October this year London will host the first ever London Games Festival. The week-long event will bring together existing events currently scattered throughout the year with completely new events; according to it backers, it has the potential to become the ‘Cannes Film Festival’ of the games world. The festival will include a games summit and a content market event, and will culminate with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, which this year will feature a Video Games Awards section that has equal status with the main event.
 

A new facility in Yorkshire and Humber aims to help companies in the region improve their logistics and supply chain management. The University of Hull Logistics Institute will bring together expertise from a number of different university departments and will offer companies a range of services, including tailored research and consultancy, managed work space for start-ups and a specialist MSc qualification in logistics and supply chain management. Aimed particularly at manufacturing companies, it is located near the Humber estuary, where many of the UK’s ports are concentrated.

A Selective Finance for Investment England (SFIE) grant of $114,000 from the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) has enabled Weightron Bilanciai, an Italian-owned company based in Chesterfield, Derbyshire to expand its premises, purchase machinery and install new ICT facilities. The company, the UK division of Bilanciai Group, Europe’s largest manufacturer of weighbridges and industrial weighing equipment, will use the grant to incorporate special welding fixtures and a new rotating plant jig at its expanded premises.

High-tech giant Thales, a leader in the military and civilian aerospace sector, is to concentrate its operations at the Gatwick Diamond site in Crawley, West Sussex in South East England, consolidating operations from a number of existing sites. The company aims to create a working environment conducive to research and innovation, which it numbers among its major strengths. Named Sapphire South East, the complex will include three new office buildings, a manufacturing and testing unit and extensive facilities for employees, including a restaurant, cafes and a gym.

A new centre dedicated to fostering the success of high-performance engineering and manufacturing companies has officially opened in Eastern England. Hethel Engineering Centre in Norfolk is supported by a number of key partners, including Group Lotus plc, the Learning and Skills Council and Norfolk County Council. Intended to act as a hub for engineering companies in the region, it offers business incubation space, a range of training programmes and full conference facilities.

Morgan Stanley is to create 300 new jobs as it expands its financial services base in Glasgow, Scotland. In February the company’s Card Services division acquired Goldfish, a credit card operation based in the same city, and with Goldfish’s 320 employees, its workforce will grow to almost 1,800. Many of the new jobs will be for senior staff such as financial and operations managers and analysts, and the new operation will be Morgan Stanley’s largest in the UK outside London. The investment was supported by a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant of $5.6 million from the Scottish Executive. The financial services sector is one of the fastest growing in Scotland and generates some $8.75 billion annually, or 6 per cent of Scottish GDP.

Caterpillar is to invest a further $82.3 million in its Northern Ireland power generator subsidiary, FG Wilson, to help make it a global centre of excellence for R&D, manufacturing, sales and marketing. The investment, spread across the company’s three facilities in the province, will include enhanced training and development for staff and increased sales and marketing support. Information systems will be upgraded and lean manufacturing processes will be developed to help the company increase its penetration of the EMEA market. FG Wilson started out 40 years ago as a small, family-run firm; today it employs more than 3,000 people and exports its generators to 180 countries worldwide.

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