West Yorkshire Welcomes Multi Million Pound Funding for Innovation:

23 July 2021

Yesterday, Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced the Government’s new Innovation Strategy at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Sheffield which includes £22.6m in funding for the Advanced Machinery and Productivity Institute (AMPI).  

The new joint scheme is designed to support innovation in advanced machinery across West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.  

AMPI, a partnership across West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, and led by the National Physical Laboratory, has been awarded funds released through the Strength in Places Fund (SIPF), a UKRI programme that helps areas of the UK to build on existing strengths in research and innovation to deliver benefits for their local economy.  

The Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, and Sir Roger Marsh OBE DL, Chair of the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) responded to the success: 

Roger Marsh said:  

“I am delighted that Leeds City Region is part of this successful bid. The expertise across the partnership will provide a secure collaboration and development space for SMEs to access expertise from universities including Leeds and Huddersfield and the technical resources needed for advanced machinery innovation to flourish for SMEs.  AMPI will fulfil a presently unaddressed, yet critical aspect, of the UK’s manufacturing innovation infrastructure and is based on the needs of industry.” 

Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire said:  

“This is great news and a partnership with Greater Manchester provides the opportunity to increase regional growth and productivity and drive forward the M62 innovation corridor. Supporting businesses and championing the regional economy is at the heart of what I intend to deliver as Mayor. Partnerships such as these lead to enhanced skills capability, greater export potential, increased productivity, and innovative activity shifting our economy further towards low carbon. 

I applaud the ambitions of this bid, which will provide opportunities for our local businesses to test, design and commission the advanced machinery of tomorrow.  

This is good news for the region, and I hope that this announcement marks the start of a better balance of innovation investment as part of the Government’s levelling up policy.  

I look forward to working with partners to optimise the opportunities presented through this partnership while I will continue to lobby government to make levelling up a reality and not a pipedream.”