Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
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Lift off for aerospace and manufacturing projects
A new £80 million package to keep the UK at the forefront of advances in aerospace and advanced manufacturing was announced by Business Secretary Vince Cable today.
The Government is investing £25 million, with business, led by
Rolls-Royce, providing a further £40 million, for a series of
collaborative research and technology projects.
SAMULET II (Strategic Affordable Manufacturing in the UK
through Leading Environmental Technology) will investigate new
manufacturing processes aimed at increasing productivity and
making the best use of resources.
The Government will separately invest £15 million in new
capital equipment for the High Value Manufacturing Catapult - part
of a Government backed network of technology and innovation
centres - which will assist projects such as these across the
advanced manufacturing sector.
The announcement came as the Business Secretary visited the
Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) in Rotherham to perform the
groundbreaking ceremony for the new Rolls-Royce Advanced Blade
Casting Facility.
Dr Cable said:
“Our investment in manufacturing research and technology is a
good example of Government and business working together to
deliver growth
“This type of research will help ensure the UK stays at the
forefront of advanced manufacturing. That is particularly true in
sectors such as aerospace where we have a world leading position -
and are determined to keep it that way.
“The new factory that Rolls-Royce are building will create at
least 150 highly skilled jobs which doesn’t just mean good news
for them but for our aerospace sector and the wider economy too.”
The Government investment in SAMULET II will be delivered
through the Technology Strategy Board. The programme will see
Rolls-Royce working with other companies and universities using
the facilities available at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult
- including those based at the AMP in Rotherham.
Rolls-Royce Director of Engineering and Technology Colin
Smith said:
“Rolls-Royce consistently invests significant amounts of
money and resource in order to improve both our products and our
manufacturing capability. The vast majority of this investment
also continues to improve our environmental performance. SAMULET
II will build on the positive work undertaken in SAMULET I by
Rolls-Royce along with our industrial and academic partners.”
The new Rolls-Royce Advanced Blade Casting Facility will
employ 150 people in a state of the art factory which will produce
high-tech turbine blades using advanced manufacturing processes.
The casting process grows a blade as a single crystal from
aerospace super-alloys producing high performance, high value
components that can operate under extreme conditions in the
hottest part of the aero engine.
Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, said:
“Innovation in advanced, high value, manufacturing is
fundamental to our future success and is a major driver of
economic growth. As the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology
Strategy Board has an important role to play supporting and
encouraging innovative companies to develop breakthrough
manufacturing technologies – technologies that are more efficient,
more sustainable, and that can exploit new product and process opportunities.
"We also welcome the further investment in the HVM
Catapult, which will expand its offering of cutting edge
technologies available for UK companies large and small.”
The Business Secretary added:
"The work of the Aerospace Business Leaders group
and the Aerospace Growth Partnership identified an important need
for increased investment in manufacturing technologies, so we can
produce aerospace products more efficiently and competitively. We
are now acting on that with SAMULET II.
“More widely our increased investment in new capital
equipment for the High Value Manufacturing Catapult underlines our
commitment to keeping our manufacturing industry world class.
“Aerospace is one sector where we do have truly world-class
capability. We are the number one in Europe and have the second
largest industry in the world. The Government will continue to
work with business to help deliver growth to the aerospace
industry and I’ll be saying more about that at the Farnborough Air
Show next month”.
Notes to editors: 1. The £25 million public research and
development funding for SAMULET II will be more than matched by
business to deliver £65 million of new collaborative research and
development projects; the Government is separately investing £15
million in new capital equipment for the High Value Manufacturing
Catapult, which will benefit not just Rolls-Royce and the SAMULET
II programme but other companies using the facility.
2. The organisations involved in SAMULET II are Rolls-Royce,
GKN Aerospace, four members of the High Value Manufacturing
Catapult - the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), the
Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC), the National Composites
Centre (NCC), and the Manufacturing Technology Centre – and the
University of Birmingham. 3. Seven partners are working
together in the High Value Manufacturing Catapult centre, which
opened its doors for business in October 2011. They bring together
their expertise in different and complementary areas of high value
manufacturing. The HVM Catapult provides an integrated capability
and embraces all forms of manufacture using metals and composites,
in addition to process manufacturing technologies and
bio-processing. It draws on excellent university research to
accelerate the commercialisation of new and emerging manufacturing
technologies.
The seven partners are: Advanced Forming Research Centre
(University of Strathclyde), Advanced Manufacturing Research
Centre (University of Sheffield), Centre for Process Innovation
(Wilton & Sedgefield), Manufacturing Technology Centre
(Coventry), National Composites Centre (University of Bristol),
Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (University of
Manchester and Sheffield) and Warwick Manufacturing Group
(University of Warwick).
4. Single crystal turbine blades can operate at higher
temperatures and so enable engines to be a) more fuel efficient
and b) allow turbine blades to last longer and so reduce engine
maintenance costs.
5. The Government's economic policy objective is to
achieve 'strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is
more evenly shared across the country and between
industries.' It set four ambitions in the ‘Plan
for Growth’ (PDF 1.7MB), published at Budget 2011:
To create the most competitive tax system in the G20;To make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business;To encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy;To create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.
Work is underway across Government to achieve these ambitions,
including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth
Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to
this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with
more clarity about the long-term direction in which the Government
wants the economy to travel.
6. BIS's online newsroom contains the latest press
notices, speeches, as well as video and images for download. It
also features an up to date list of BIS press office contacts. See
http://www.bis.gov.uk/newsroom for more information.
Contacts:
BIS Press Office
bispress.releases@bis.gsi.gov.uk
Matt Barker
Phone: 020 7215 5946
matt.barker@bis.gsi.gov.uk