Manufacturing
| Region | 2000 | % | 2003 (est) |
% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern | 333,781 | 15.0 | 379,000 | 14.1 |
| East Midlands | 383,360 | 22.1 | 382,000 | 19 |
| London | 287,211 | 7.1 | 263,000 | 7.7 |
| North East | 175,569 | 18.2 | 174,000 | 16.3 |
| North West | 499,020 | 17.6 | 492,000 | 16 |
| Northern Ireland | n/a | n/a | 95,000 | 13 |
| Scotland | 302,473 | 13.6 | 291,000 | 12.3 |
| South East | 436,753 | 12.0 | 501,000 | 12.4 |
| South West | 302,288 | 15.0 | 323,000 | 13.4 |
| Wales | 200,951 | 18.6 | 201,000 | 15.8 |
| West Midlands | 494,798 | 21.6 | 479,000 | 20.5 |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 383,641 | 18.4 | 372,000 | 16.1 |
| United Kingdom | 3,799,845 | 15.1 | 3,790,000 | 14.3 |
| Source: ONS Annual Business Inquiry | ||||
At one time or another virtually every product that can be imagined has been made in the UK. In particular its heavy manufacturing drove the industrial revolution, starting with the first blast furnace at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire.
A map of the major UK cities gives a good picture of where manufacturing flourished, and often specialisations could be identified, in particular:
- Birmingham, (automotive)
- Glasgow (shipbuilding),
- London (everything),
- Manchester (textiles),
- Newcastle (shipbuilding and steel),
- Nottingham (apparel, medicine),
- Sheffield (steel and steel products)
- Sunderland (shipbuilding and coal-mining)
- Leeds (textiles and engineering)
- Belfast (shipbuilding and textiles)
- Cardiff (steel)
The automotive industry can be traced back to the 1890s (growing after World War I), by which time industries such as shipbuilding, textiles and steel were already established.
In the inter-War years modern industries emerged, with aerospace forming clusters around London, Bristol and in Hertfordshire. The Hertfordshire cluster no longer exists. The early electronics industry generally preferred the south, especially the home counties.
Today there is no heavy manufacturing industry in which UK-based firms can be considered world leaders and no product in which a UK city or region is the world leader.
However, the Midlands, in particular, remains a strong manufacturing centre, with around a fifth of employment dependent on manufacturing, and the East Midlands Development Agency has a policy to maintaining this characteristic.
More recently, high technology firms have concentrated largely along the M4 motorway, partly because of access to London Heathrow Airport, but also because of the economies of agglomeration. However, the general pattern remains that the south has lower, and falling, reliance on manufacturing.
Read more about this topic: Economic Geography Of The United Kingdom