Sheffield and Rotherham are reversing the spiral of manufacturing decline

Dear members — today we bring you the second in our series on Sheffield’s economy. Last time we had James Evans from the think tank Centre for Cities writing about manufacturing. In his sometimes controversial piece, he argued that: “the degree of attention given to services is a fraction of that given to manufacturing in the region, yet it has grown faster and become bigger than any type of manufacturing. Services may not excite politicians, but their success matters for Sheffield’s future prosperity. A romantic attachment to the city's industrial past should not blind policymakers.”

This week, we wanted to give you the other side of the argument. We asked John Yates, former Communications and Marketing Director at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) to put the case that manufacturing is vitally important for Sheffield’s economy and deserves maximum attention from its politicians.

That’s below — and let us know what you think after reading both pieces in the comments. But first, it’s your Tribune briefing.

Your Tribune Briefing

👀 Sheffield Council have deferred a decision on whether to reduce the amount of money carers get for looking after older foster children until next month. The education, children and families policy committee had been due to discuss the changes on Tuesday, the day before foster carers were due to be publicly thanked for the work they do at Full Council. However, after The Tribune covered the story in our Monday briefing, the decision was made to delay this discussion until December’s meeting.

At the committee yesterday, chair Councillor Dawn Dale said the decision had been deferred due to the risk that “an inaccurate article in the media” and “misinformation” could worry the fostering community. Sheffield Council did finally provide us with a statement about our report (now added to the original story) but did not explain how our reporting had been inaccurate.

✈️ Doncaster Sheffield Airport could reopen in spring 2026, as negotiations with a new operator are hopefully drawing to a close before the year ends. The airport shut down two years ago after the site’s owner Peel Group insisted it was not financially viable and Doncaster mayor Ros Jones told the BBC that she knows “residents and businesses are keen for the airport to reopen and would want that to happen yesterday”. If you’re wondering why Peel Group would shut down such a valued business, this deep dive from our sister paper the Manchester Mill might be an interesting read. 

⚽ After months and months in limbo, the long-awaited takeover of Sheffield United has been confirmed. A consortium led by American businessman Steve Rosen is set to buy the club from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Abdullah for approximately £105 million, pending approval from the EFL. As we reported previously, Bournemouth's former chief scout Des Taylor has been working with the new owners and will reportedly be given a senior position at the club once the deal is finalised. 

🚨 A grandfather jailed for taking part in the riot outside a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers has been found dead in prison as a result of hanging. Peter Lynch, 61, died in his cell at HMP Moorland last month, while serving a two year and eight-month sentence for violent unrest, which carries a maximum sentence of five years. According to a Guardian report of his sentencing, Lynch had screamed at police that they were “protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them” and also held a placard describing MPs, judges, the media and police as corrupt.  During the hearing, his son Casey questioned whether his father “should’ve been [in prison] in the first place”. 

🍄‍🟫 And finally, we have just a few spaces left on our next Tribune members’ event — guided fungi foraging! We’ll be hunting for mushrooms with expert Colin Unsworth on 16th November. Find out more and buy your ticket here.

Sheffield and Rotherham are reversing the spiral of manufacturing decline

By John Yates

It’s a familiar story. Once the ‘workshop of the world’, Britain has seen a seismic shift from being a nation of makers to a service sector economy. And with it, thousands of jobs have gone, never to come back. Best to accept it, and move on.

There’s a lot of truth to it. But it misses a key detail: that shift is going into reverse in both America and the European Union.

The Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East have exposed western economies’ vulnerability to disruptions in manufacturing supply chains. Putin weaponised gas supplies, resulting in a devastating rise in energy costs, inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. Our almost complete dependency on South East Asia for the production of “chips”, was exposed during Covid when factory shut downs in China and Taiwan virtually halting western car manufacturing.

Policy makers are now belatedly re-thinking the wisdom of exporting so much of our manufacturing capability to South East Asia. The United States and the EU are pouring trillions of dollars into making advanced manufacturing and industrial innovation the high tech weapons in an economic war for superpower status and security. The UK is also catching on, and one area they are looking to as an example is right here, on the Sheffield and Rotherham border.

Over the last two decades Sheffield and Rotherham have enjoyed a manufacturing resurgence driven by global aerospace, defence and high-end automotive brands hungry for R&D. It has transformed the battleground of one of the bloodiest industrial confrontations in modern British history into a fertile oasis of industrial collaboration.

Today, a collection of closely packed high-tech manufacturing firms are at the heart of what the Brookings’ Institution’s Bruce Katz called the world’s first Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District (AMID). An area which stretches from the site of the old Orgreave coking coal plant, down the lower Don Valley to the huge fortresses of the forging and forming industry, it provides a brilliant example of what Harvard economist, Michael Porter, called the power of ‘clustering.’

Porter argues that clusters sharpen competitiveness in three ways: first, by increasing the productivity of companies based in the area; second, by driving innovation, which underpins future productivity growth; and third, by stimulating the formation of new businesses, which expands and strengthens the cluster itself.  “A cluster allows each member to benefit as if it had greater scale or as if it had joined with others formally — without requiring it to sacrifice its flexibility,” Porter says.

Back in 2015, when Katz (now an advisor to the region’s devolved Mayor, Oliver Coppard) visited both Manchester and Rotherham, he noted that the emerging cluster of manufacturers in South Yorkshire, “has been really organic — and that is just the way the world works”. He added a clarion call: “This is Sheffield’s moment… Your capability in advanced manufacturing and materials is distinctive globally, and your culture of collaboration across business, university and local government aligns well with the new network model of innovation growth.”

The catalyst for this renaissance was a visionary private sector entrepreneur, Adrian Allen, who imagined a “machining centre of excellence” in South Yorkshire. His bosses at Technicut — a high-tech machining business based in the red light district of Attercliffe, next door to The Naughty Company — shared Allen’s vision and gave him an extended paid sabbatical to make it a reality. Teaming up with machining genius Keith Ridgway, the two men secured the backing of Boeing as a founding partner and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) was born.

From 2004 a small nucleus of engineering disruptors at the AMRC set about re-writing the rule book on aerospace machining. Breakthroughs in production times, the use of novel materials and precision accuracy quickly enabled its UK partners to win multi-million contracts with both Boeing and Airbus.

Then came Rolls Royce. The AMRC so improved the production of Rolls Royce’s engines that the company funded a major expansion of its facilities and was soon investing another £100 million to build one of the world’s most advanced castings facilities. Here, more than 100 skilled staff produce single-crystal turbine blades that operate in temperatures up to 200 degrees above the melting point of their alloy.

Other global engineering brands were soon following in the turbine maker’s contrails. McLaren re-shored the manufacture of its super car bodies from Austria six years ago with the opening of its £50 million Composites Technology Centre. Across the Parkway, Boeing set up its only production facility in Europe with a £50 million machining factory on the site of the old Sheffield airport. Nikken, a global leader operating in the aerospace, defence, motorsport and medical sectors, established and then expanded its European headquarters at the heart of AMID.

Almost a decade later, the cluster continues to grow. In recent weeks, the Italian-based Danieli group – annual revenues of £3.6bn – who design and build low emission plants for the steel industry worldwide, has opened shop next to McLaren. Vulcan Engineering, a world leader in the manufacture of high purity, composite encapsulated seals, is also stepping up a gear.

Even global Taiwanese players are establishing a major presence in the city. The Walsin Lihwa Corporation recently bought Sheffield-based Special Melted Products for £142 million in deal they describe as: “significantly boosting our ability to serve premium segments such as aerospace and to further execute on our strategy of being world’s leading stainless steel and nickel alloy manufacturer.” This investment (which includes a new cutting-edge research lab) signals that the seismic shift from the West to the East has been slammed into reverse.

Threats and opportunities in a changing world

So there’s clear evidence that companies in the sector want to move, and expand here. But there are also national and international drivers that mean manufacturing will only become more important.

First, the national strategic need for defence engineering is spurring business growth in the lower Don Valley. On defence, the £1 billion state ‘recapitalisation’ of Sheffield Forgemasters, with its monumental machining facility, shows just how security critical our city’s steelworks still are. Add to this BAE Systems’ plan to extend its footprint in the city and it is clear that steel is far from a being a heritage industry.

And second, as covered by Ed Conway in his excellent book Material World, the world is only consuming more and more manufactured goods, of ever-increasing complexity. That raises important environmental questions, but there’s clearly a vast market to go at.

No one is suggesting that all this investment will turn the clocks back to a time when the number of steel workers in Sheffield and Rotherham dwarfed the number of students. While modern manufacturing facilities require fewer people, those they do need will require higher skill levels and command higher salaries as a consequence. But by building on the city’s strengths in forging, casting, machining and materials forming, it can create (and is creating) new high value jobs in a region that has seen a dangerous drift towards low wage service sector roles and a big rise in public sector employment.

What is the alternative? A lot of hope has been invested in other emerging sectors such as the creative and cultural industries (CCI) sector, which includes IT, software and computer services. Post-covid, there has undoubtedly been a sudden surge in the growth of new CCI businesses in the region. According to a recent data research and mapping report commissioned by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Authority, the stock of creative businesses has more than trebled in the last decade, from below 1,500 companies to over 5,000.

This might suggest the rise of a new innovative, creative class — but no. Dig below the headlines and the report paints a much less positive picture. Worryingly, it finds that just 4.8% of South Yorkshire’s CCI sector businesses actually file full accounts. The remainder, the report assumes, are below the statutory reporting threshold. Just 101 of these companies (less than 2%) have accessed R&D grants, and just 36 have secured equity investment.

So how can Sheffield benefit from the shift back to manufacturing? There’s a playbook from David Sainsbury (Science and Innovation Minister in the first Blair government) that fits the moment well.

First, identify our leading sectors and businesses and do all we can to maintain their position in the face of global competition. (This could be rephrased as: focus on what we already do well). Second, stimulate those sectors and businesses with the capacity to be among the best in the world. Third, ensure that emerging technologies of today become the growth sectors of tomorrow. And lastly, combine these elements in such a way that South Yorkshire consolidates its reputation as a destination for investment by world-leading companies, and for exporting its products to world-leading markets.

The question is not whether Sheffield should become a city of makers, but by how much it can grow its manufacturing capacity. Some in the region’s political leadership think AMID is now fully grown. Adrian Allen would beg to differ. It’s not yet taken off.

Which makes it fitting that Allen’s former employers Technicut, who have done so much to inspire this manufacturing renaissance, are about to become near neighbours of McLaren, Rolls-Royce and Boeing as they take up a posh new residence on the Sheffield Parkway. Or, as the area is known in certain circles: the Mayfair of Manufacturing.