connected-clusters-report-energy

ConnectedClusters Landscaping Study 22
Energy Capital –
The West Midlands
Energy Cluster
Introduction
The city of Birmingham is a traditional English
city, built on the back of the industrial revolution.
It has a long and strong tradition of industry
and manufacturing which was then steadily
eroded from the 1970s as manufacturing
largely moved overseas following lower cost
labour. In the wake of this change, the city
and region has sought to redevelop itself and
modernise its ageing infrastructure through
redevelopment of the city’s buildings and
transportation and a redefining of the major
employment sectors. This is set against a
backdrop of major cuts to local government
funding and a reduction in capacity to deliver
new initiatives as the size of the city council has
reduced by a factor of more than five.
The space this has created mandates a
stakeholder rather than council- or local
government-led approach to innovation.
The wider West Midlands conurbation
has a rich history as one of Britain’s
industrial heartlands. Described variously
as ‘city of a thousand trades’ and
‘the workshop of the world’, Birmingham is built
on manufacturing, innovation and resourcefully
seizing economic opportunity. As Britain’s
second largest metropole, Birmingham is
a diverse, global city (McEwan, Pollard,
Henry, 2005) 16 .
Throughout the 20th century, Birmingham
came to specialise in the automotive industry.
Austin Rover, later British Leyland and Rover,
was based at Longbridge. Jaguar was based
in nearby Coventry and many other marques
were synonymous with the area. Around these
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) was
a hinterland of tier 1 suppliers and complex
supply chains which supported a thriving
industrial base.
However, since the 1970s, the West Midlands
has faced more challenging circumstances.
The near-collapse of the British auto-industry in
the latter decades of the 20th century marked
a transition from high levels of employment
and good wages to increasing unemployment
(Centre for Cities, 2014) 17 . The travails of
the car industry were mirrored in any number
of manufacturing sectors, where strong
competition from low-labour cost countries has
led to a decline in mass-manufactured goods.
A case in point is the Tyseley site of the firm
Webster & Horsfall, once home to a large
cable manufacturing concern. Its work was
displayed in the Great Exhibition of 1851 and
the company made the first trans-Atlantic
communication cable. It once manufactured
all manner of cables, wires and ropes.
However, with competition too fierce for
‘low-value’ cable products, the firm now
focuses exclusively on very high end,
specialised cable products with a large
degree of value added. By way of example,
take the cheap bulk wire used in the
reinforcement of car tyres, as an example
of an old and discontinued product.
Contrast this with the high value niche of
orthodontic wires used in dental implants.
The latter have to be produced to exacting
quality standards, in sanitary environment
suitable for medical applications.
The region is in the process of undergoing
a metamorphosis. The renaissance of the
West Midlands is evident in any number of
dimensions – from new city centre architecture
and urban renewal to new transport links and
firms restoring the production of manufactured
goods to the area.