FutureStory
Derby and the
East Midlands
Contents
02 Introduction
04 Industry and invention
06 A history of invention in the heart of the UK
08 The Silk Mill – Derby’s largest employer
10 Derby: planes, trains and automobiles
12 Rolls-Royce – a great British brand gone global
16 Students take flight with Rolls-Royce
20 Bombardier building trains round the clock
and round the world
22 Networking the region
24 The car industry – holding on through recession
26 Reinventing for a greener world
28 East Midlands – Britain’s largest freight airport
30 Global commerce revitalises the local economy
32 Starting small – growing global
34 Pennine Healthcare – a family business
competing on a global stage
38 A creative culture in the East Midlands
40 Creativity in a digital world
42 World culture comes to the East Midlands
46 ‘Up-skilling’ at Derby University
48 Young talent stepping up
52 Building blocks for the future
53 The world is changing
02
FutureStory
Derby and the East Midlands
Its prime location in
the geographical heart
of the UK, an abundance
of natural resources and
a streak of inventiveness
put the East Midlands
at the centre of the
Industrial Revolution.
These advantages gave
rise to a thriving
industry base which
still powers the region.
A
skilled workforce grew up in the 1700s around
Derby’s Silk Mill – which has a claim to be the
country’s very first factory. As one industry
declined, new ones took over: silk gave way to clockmaking, iron-casting and engineering in a chain of
events leading up to the present day.
International companies have moved into cities around the
region – AstraZeneca, Rolls-Royce, Speedo, Pepsi and Toyota
are all in the East Midlands, employing thousands of people.
Not everyone knows, for example, that Derby makes more
goods to sell abroad than anywhere else in England – making
it one of the cities most plugged into the global economy.
The hundreds of engineering businesses based all over the
region are inventing new technologies and new ways of doing
things. Family firms, deeply rooted in the region, are stepping
up to compete with companies in China and India. Small
creative start-up businesses are taking advantage of new
digital technologies to serve customers all over the world.
International brand names are coming into Derby’s new
Westfield centre. And local schools and colleges are adapting
to equip young people for the jobs and industries of the future.
So everywhere you look today you begin to see the
future story of Derby and the East Midlands.
Derby, Leicester and Nottingham are the
economic ‘motors’ of the East Midlands – with half the
population and 45% of the region’s businesses.
Over the last 25 years manufacturing jobs
in the East Midlands have fallen by 40% to 300,000 –
and service jobs have risen 866% to almost
1.5 million.
Inventions which have come out of the East Midlands
include the jet engine, Ibuprofen, DNA
fingerprinting and the MRI scanner.
04
I
nvention has been the life
blood of the East Midlands
in the past, and will be its
life blood for the future.
Industry
and
invention
Lincoln
06
A history of invention
in the heart of the UK
The East Midlands – encompassing Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland,
Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and most of Lincolnshire – is a region
of contrasts. The breath-taking natural landscapes of the Peak District
National Park and Sherwood Forest sit alongside global engineering and
high-tech modern manufacturing.
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Lincoln became an engineering
powerhouse. The battle tank
was invented here during the
First World War. And today
German engineering company,
Siemens, is a major economic
force, alongside tourism
and agriculture.
Nottingham
NottinghamÕ s famous Lace
Market area recalls the cityÕ s
global trade in fine cloth.
Today, the city is better known
as the home of global fashion
mogul Paul Smith.
The regionÕ s historic wealth
came from productive land
and sheep farming, and
plentiful natural resources.
In the 19th Century, the
market towns of the East
Midlands were transformed
into industrial centres at the
heart of the Industrial Revolution Ð with some
of the worldÕ s most important workshops,
producing everything from coal to trains
to shoes.
Then
Then
Now
Leicester
During the 19th Century, the
boot and shoe trade flourished
in Leicester Ð there were just over
400 boot and shoemakers in
the city at the start of the 1830s.
Thirty years later by the 1860s,
that number had hit almost 3000.
Derby
Northampton
From the Silk Mill to Rolls-RoyceÕ s
jet engines, Derby has prospered
over the centuries as a centre of
invention, engineering and trade.
Today Derby exports more per
person than any other place
in England.
The townÕ s commercial fame was
built around the shoe and boot
trade Ð featured in the recent film
Ô Kinky BootsÕ . By the late 19th
century more than half the men in
the town worked in the shoe trade.
08
The Silk Mill – Derby’s
largest employer
Built in the 18th century, Derby’s Silk Mill is
an early example of the region’s trading links.
Roger Shelley, Keeper of the Mill, tells the story:
“We think the Silk Mill was the country’s first factory, set up when
the Lombe brothers spotted the opportunity to use an undeveloped
island site in the River Derwent to create a water-powered mill.
By the time they had finished with it, it was the centre for an
Industrial Revolution.
The patent which Thomas Lombe obtained
“By the 1730s almost one in ten Derby
residents worked here, spinning miles
of thread every day. I liken it to RollsRoyce today who employ just about
the same proportion of the city’s
residents in often highly skilled work.
“The raw materials came from Persia,
which we know today as Iran, and
China in the Far East, via the Silk
Road. The founding Lombe brothers
– entrepreneurs of their time – had
great success by copying Italian
technology, which was much more
sophisticated than existing English
We need people who are capable of picking up the
raw materials that are in front of them, rearranging
them in an imaginative way and using that to boost
innovation in the future.
techniques. But it wouldn’t have
worked without a man called George
Sorocold, who is regarded as the
country’s first hydraulic engineer and
a pioneer of the city’s engineering
tradition. He was experienced in
making machinery like water wheels
and he used that rotary motion to
create power that could drive
machines inside the factory .”
“For 40 years the silk mills were the
largest employer in Derby, then silk
production went into rapid decline as
cheap cotton became popular. But it
didn’t matter because by then Derby
was known as an engineering town.
The railways took over as the biggest
employer and local people switched
to making machine parts and
engineering tools.
“Later, iron products made in Derby
were exported around the world.
One company, George Fletcher, made
machinery for refining sugar cane which
was exported for use in the Caribbean –
you can still find pieces of it discarded in
the jungle. Andrew Handyside, another
iron company, was best known for
making red pillar boxes. And there are
still examples of their products in South
America, South Africa, and anywhere
that Britain had a colony.
“I think the Silk Mill shows us that if
you’ve got the intelligence to spot an
opportunity, you can use that to your
advantage – and that’s really what
we need today. We need people who
are capable of picking up the raw
materials that are in front of them,
rearranging them in an imaginative
way and using that to boost
innovation in the future.”
in 1718 set out the value of his innovation:
...three sorts of engines never before
made or used within this our Kingdom of
Great Britain, one to wind finest raw silk,
another to spin and the other to twist the
finest Italian raw silk into organzine in
great perfection... by which means many
thousand families of our subjects may
be constantly employed in Great Britain,
be furnished with silks of all sorts of the
manufacture of our subjects, and great
quantities exported into foreign parts
by being made as good and cheap as any
foreign silk can be.
That was Lombe’s recipe for success in the
eighteenth century: new technology, new
jobs, exotic consumer products, competitive
pricing and aspirations for global trade.
He could have been describing the essential
ingredients of today’s successful businesses.
10
T
he region’s global
engineering giants
employ thousands of
people directly – and are at the
centre of a network of hundreds
of smaller businesses which
make up their supply chains
across the region.
Derby: planes,
trains and
automobiles
12
Rolls-Royce – a great British
brand gone global
Over 12,000 people work for Rolls-Royce in Derby and it is the city’s
biggest employer – nearly everyone in the city knows someone who works
there. The company’s base in Derby also generates about 15,000 jobs in
the local companies which supply them throughout the region. Rooted in
the heart of the industrial East Midlands, Rolls-Royce is surely one of the
most famous British brand names in the world.
I
ts transformation into a fully-fledged global business is one of the
UK’s corporate success stories. About 85% of its revenues now
come from abroad. It operates in 50 countries and of the
39,000 Rolls-Royce employees today, 40% are outside the UK
– compared to only 7% two decades ago.
And how international the business is today shows up in the
way people work together across the world. Engineering teams
based in different locations in the country and on opposite
sides of the globe are all focused on delivering competitive
advantage and one of the key areas of focus is reducing
noise and carbon emissions. As Naresh Kumar, Rolls-Royce’s
Head of Environmental Strategy, puts it, “Many of our
engineers have to work across global boundaries of language
and culture, technology and time zones.”
A state-of-the-art global operations room has been built in
Derby to monitor the performance of 3,500 jet engines
continuously. A plane in flight can beam data back to Derby from
anywhere in the world to get questions answered and problems
solved, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
This shift to global servicing –
rather than simply manufacturing
product – is a transformation in how Rolls-Royce
does business. It may take up to 15 years to design
and build an aircraft in the first place, and then it
has around 25 years or so of flying life. So more
than half of Rolls-Royce’s revenue now comes from
providing, what they call, ‘aftermarket’ services to
the fleet of planes which carry their engines. Of the world’s 50 leading airlines, 45 use Rolls-Royce
engines and they expect to be serviced anywhere, anytime reliably. So selling product and
selling services are now inextricably inter-linked.
One of the things young
engineers get excited by in RollsRoyce when they join the team
is that we have a huge focus on
research. So they get to participate
in challenging projects.
Yet the forces driving the globalisation of Rolls-Royce are not just visible in the geographic
reach of the operations. As for all companies these days, their success in the global economy
14
depends on the ability to harness new
technologies fast and the creativity to
invent – and re-invent.
Research and development spend in
Rolls-Royce last year was an enormous
£885 million. Their philosophy is
‘Design once, use many times’ and their
business is ‘power systems’. So when they
make an advance in, say, computational
fluid dynamics to improve the efficiency
of their aerospace engines, that same
methodology may be applied to marine
engines that power the 30,000 ships
on which they are installed.
that trend could reverse. So perhaps engineering may prove
to be a beneficiary of the recession, in this respect at least.
“One of the things young engineers get excited by in
Rolls-Royce when they join the team is that we have a huge
focus on research. They get to participate in challenging
projects” says Naresh Kumar. “We spend 10% of our
revenues on R&D and much of that is directed at creating
the foundation for environmentally-friendly technology.”
Like almost all major international businesses, Rolls-Royce
continues to work hard at fostering local talent in its home
town of Derby. 200 Rolls-Royce employees are science and
engineering ambassadors in schools and colleges, 200 more
are governors of local primary and secondary schools.
They have almost 600 young people on apprenticeship
programmes around the country. Naresh Kumar says that,
from sponsoring science prizes to establishing University
Technology Centres around the world, Rolls-Royce is
looking for different ways to inspire the next generation.
”We want to give them some awareness of the opportunities
there are for new talent and fresh ideas that will help us
develop new solutions for the future.”
But finding enough qualified people to work for them in
the UK is one of the challenges Rolls-Royce faces today.
A quarter of Rolls-Royce’s annual in-take of graduates now
comes from overseas, mainly from Germany and the US.
One problem has been that, over recent years, a good
number of the brightest British graduates, including
scientists and physicists, made their way into the City
of London. But, with the crisis in financial services,
Rolls-Royce is famous for its Trent 900
engines that power the latest Airbus
A380, as well as the Trent 1000 engines
for the Boeing 787 that will soon come
into commercial service.
Research and development spend in Rolls-Royce
last year was an enormous £885 million.
Less well known, though, is their
invention of the tiny turbine blade.
Small enough to fit into the palm of
your hand, it nestles at the heart of huge
aerospace engines. Though it is small,
the blade sells for about $10,000. Gram
for gram it has a value greater than gold.
By contrast, gram for gram a car is worth
the same as a hamburger. It is worth that
$10,000 because of the complexity of the
processes and technologies that enable
its functionality.
Of the 39,000 Rolls-Royce
40% are outside the UK.
Rolls-Royce is a wellknown name in Derby,
but isn’t the only high
tech aerospace company
in the East Midlands.
Other successful
companies include
TJ Brookes and Alstom
Aerospace in Leicester,
and Greene, Tweed
in Nottingham.
It is grown from a single crystal of a
proprietary alloy and must survive in
a gas stream hotter by 350˚ Celsius than
its melting point. It develops the same
power as a Formula One racing car and
endures a force equivalent to hanging
a London bus on its tip.
It requires the skills of material scientists,
metallurgists, mathematicians,
aerodynamicists, combustion engineers,
aero thermal engineers, stress engineers,
manufacturing engineers, process
engineers, procurement specialists and
logisticians to name but a few. And it is just one of over
2,500 different parts in a typical aero engine.
These photographs are reproduced with the permission of Rolls-Royce plc,
copyright © Rolls-Royce plc 2009
employees today,
16
Students take flight
with Rolls-Royce
Sinfin Community School sits on the site of the
Rolls-Royce factory in Derby and the proximity has
worked to the school’s advantage. Young students get to
learn about engineering by working on real Rolls-Royce
engines loaned by the firm.
T
he decade-long
partnership with the
aero-engineering firm
has helped to foster the skills
and ambition of his pupils, says
Steve Monks, Sinfin’s Head
Teacher. The company also helps
to train teachers and has a
governor on the school’s board.
In Steve Monk’s view Rolls-Royce’s
role is crucial locally. “It has
a high quality brand and is a
world leader in many respects.”
Three years ago the school was
almost entirely destroyed in a fire
started by an electrical fault in the
wiring. With its burnt-down
classrooms now rebuilt, all clean
lines and red facades, Sinfin shows
no sign of its past trauma. But Steve
Monks is used to challenges. Many
of the school’s 1,100 students come
from the poorest areas of the city,
which means that often their
aspirations and expectations
for their future are pitched low.
We are a small school on the outskirts of Derby.
But we believe in educating students to take their
place in society – an increasingly global society,
But things are on the up. Last year
Sinfin recorded its best ever GCSE
results, with 30 per cent of pupils
achieving five A* – C grades, and it
is recognised as one of the most
improved schools in the country.
Rolls-Royce offers work experience
to the school and hosts the prestigious
Young Apprenticeship programme
to train 14-16 year olds in an NVQ
level qualification. Each year some
of the 20 places available go to
Sinfin’s most talented youngsters,
who can then compete for jobs at
the firm. In recognition of its
expertise in teaching young people
who go on to work in Derby’s thriving
industrial sector, in 2006 Sinfin was
awarded specialist engineering
status. “We wanted a specialism that
complemented Derby,” Mr Monks
says. “So we implement engineering’s
core subjects – maths, science, design
and technology – right the way up.”
“I think any relationship between
business and schools is highly
valuable, because it actually gives
the pupils a real sense of purpose,
a sense of an end gain to their studies.
Every time a teacher say it’s important
that you do this and do that, it’s never
quite accepted and believed as readily
as if you get a real person from the real
world who’s got a real job who comes
in and says the same thing.”
To me Rolls-Royce
feels like a local
company, even though
it is a huge global
business because it’s
just down the road.
Collaboration with industry and other
local schools and colleges is essential
because by 2010 all students will be
offered the new diploma courses.
“There’s an awful lot of work needed.
But I’m confident that we have good
links with employers,” Steve says.
“The big organisations need to get
involved in developing the career
aspirations of young people. They
are the employees of tomorrow.”
The pupils in Derby’s schools reflect
the community’s diversity. There have
long been many Indian and Pakistani
students at Sinfin and dual-language
entrance signs in English and Polish
hint at new arrivals from Eastern
Europe, while others come from Iraq
and Afghanistan. Despite the
Kids see a
successful company in
their midst and know
there is something to
aspire to.
challenge of integrating so many
different cultures in the classroom,
the school remains firmly convinced
about the benefits of multiculturalism.
This year Sinfin staff will travel to
Jamaica to swap teaching techniques
with schools there.
“The presence of big engineering
firms has an effect on all pupils –
not only those who go on to make
planes fly. The big companies set
expectations that there’s a good
labour market out there. Kids see a
successful company in their midst and
know there is something to aspire to.”
Any relationship between business
and schools is highly valuable,
because it actually gives the pupils
a real sense of purpose
18
Neeraj Sunger at 16 is head boy of Sinfin School
and a Rolls-Royce Young Apprentice
I’ve always liked maths, physics and technology.
Engineering was something I wanted to try out so when
I saw the Young Apprentice opportunity I thought
‘go for it’.
We did electrical engineering, electronics, marine and
nuclear. I go to Rolls-Royce one day a week, on Thursday.
The teachers photocopy the work you’ve missed in class
and you have to make it up in your own time. So it’s
stressful but worth it for the skills. When I started going
into such a huge company I was quite shy. Now I’m
confident, even giving speeches to the whole school.
I applied for a job in a manufacturing position. And I’m
going to start in September full time. When I look at all
the students trying to get jobs now, it’s great to have that
security. I was fighting people with degrees, so I felt quite
proud. In a couple of years I want to go to university to
do aeronautical or electronic engineering.
Derby has really good global connections. But to me
Rolls-Royce feels like a local company, even though it is
a huge global business, because it’s just down the road.
They taught us about what they do in other parts of the
world. They’re building an Indian pipeline, and they
have business connections with Singapore Airlines
and Boeing who are all over the world.
I’d definitely like to work abroad. I want to go to
America, Japan and China because they are strong
in engineering.
Kuldeepak Singh at 15 is studying
for a diploma in engineering
I decided to do the diploma
because I wanted to do electronics
and I read that you can earn a lot of
money. My friend did engineering
and is earning £15 an hour. At the
moment we are using a design
machine to make prototypes and
we recently designed a pizza cutter
handle. You have to draw it using
equations. I messed it up twice and it
ended up more like a cheese grater!
Having the big car companies nearby
has really influenced me. I think
I still would have wanted to do
engineering, though. When I finish
I’d like to design car parts working for
Toyota or Ford.
China and Japan seem to be the best
place for engineering; they are really
developing at the moment. In a way
I feel connected to India but I’d like to
stay in Derby – I’ve got family here.
Eventually I would like to start
my own business. My dad had a
construction business once, I’d like
to get that back. And I’d really like
to have my own global car company
with its own logo.
20
Bombardier building trains
round the clock and round
the world
Commuters and leisure travellers across the UK are going back to the train.
More people are now using the railways than at any time since the Second World
War. “Lots of people choose train travel now because it’s convenient, it’s quick
and it allows them to spend quality time doing things they want to do”, says
Jon Seddon, Director of Strategic Programmes at Bombardier’s site in Derby.
Over the last decade the Government has invested in the railways, and as
Britain’s roads become more crowded and congested, companies are putting
more and more freight on the rails.
D
erby is the rail
manufacturing centre
of the UK. Since many
of the global companies based
in the city and the surrounding
area have such important global
links, new ideas developed in
Derby could find themselves on
the tracks in Denver or Delhi
in the future.
Derby is part of a global family – Bombardier
has over 50 production and engineering
sites across the world.
2000 people work for Bombardier in the UK –
part of a total 34,200 globally.
East Midlands Trains – one of the UK’s
major passenger train companies – is also
based in Derby, employing over 600 people locally.
The East Midlands is Europe’s densest
cluster of rail engineering companies – with over
230 companies around Derby alone.
Litchurch Lane, in Derby is home to
the UK’s major train-building facility.
Bombardier is a key part of the local
economy, but it is also part of a global
company – with its headquarters in
Canada, and the executive and
engineers in Derby reporting to
European HQ in Berlin.
Trains have been made at Litchurch
Lane since Midland Rail owned the
We have engineers
here working on a
project all day which
we then ‘package up’
and send to our design
centre in Hyderabad
overnight – then, come
the following morning,
it’s back with us to carry
on working.
factory site in 1873, and it has gone
through a succession of owners since
– including the Swiss-headquartered
global firm ABB, and the GermanSwedish conglomerate Adtranz.
So foreign investors have long
recognised the strengths of Derby
as a centre of rail engineering.
Seddon continues, “Because we’re
part of a global company we’re able to
share expertise around the company.
So we have engineers here working
on a project all day which we then
‘package up’ and send to our design
centre in Hyderabad overnight – then
come the following morning, it’s back
with us to carry on working. It’s great
for us because not only do we have
access to a really top quality bank of
engineers in India, but it enables us to
work through the night, developing
designs much more quickly that we
used to.”
I’m proud to say I’m
apprentice trained, that
generations of my family
worked here in the past.
I think it’s really good
for Derby in general and
for me as well.
The Gautrain project is another
example of Bombardier operating today
in a seamless global system. They deliver
accurately manufactured sub-assemblies
and export them as flat packs for final
assembly in the South Africa.
In his role as Production Manager on
sophisticated modern manufacturing
projects like these, Richard Toon is
responsible for making sure everything
runs smoothly. He says he absolutely
loves his job. “I started here as an
apprentice. Times were very difficult
back then too. The company pushed me
and pushed me to further my education.
I ended up getting a Master’s degree in
business which I was really pleased to get.
I’m proud to say I’m apprentice trained,
that generations of my family worked
here in the past. I think it’s really good
for Derby in general and for me as well.”
22
Networking the region
A network of 400 rail engineering companies reaches out across the
region, exporting to nearly 70 countries worldwide. These and other
firms in the East Midlands have grown up around large companies
like Bombardier and support their competitiveness – as Jon Seddon,
speaking for Bombardier, appreciates:
In the East Midlands we’ve
got literally hundreds of rail
businesses nearby. They support
us. We support them. And we grow
together. And that means the
region becomes more competitive
and we each individually become
more competitive. This is the
most concentrated rail cluster on
the planet. And that’s incredibly
important and powerful for the
region’s economy.
B
ombardier’s core business is building trains,
not the furniture that the passengers sit
on. So the founders of Primarius UK saw
an opportunity. Primarius, just one company
in the supply chain network in the area, has a great
success story to tell. It started five years ago in Corby
in Northamptonshire, and has gone from strength
to strength. Martin Thornton and Brian Deegan
have worked hard to build up a relationship of trust
with Bombardier, and from that they have grown
their business into a major supplier of seating and
transit interiors.
They now supply to a range of other UK rail companies, such as
Railcare, Transys Projects and Wabtec Rail, and plan to expand
even further afield. They already supply to Irish Rail, and have
got their eyes on the market in Continental Europe: with
Deutsche Bahn and Siemens in Germany, SNCF in France
and CAF in Spain.
Growing from scratch to 50 employees today, Primarius now
has its own supply chain. They contract metalwork, some from
low-cost countries, but most from companies in the Midlands.
“We’re in the East Midlands because
we can be close to all the main rail
companies in the UK,” explains
co-founder and Operations Director,
Brian Deegan.” More emphasis on rail
travel in the next few years, should
mean a large upturn in business for
us. We would like to continue to
grow. We’re already looking at new
premises, and we only moved here
two and a half years ago.”
But not all companies in the rail supply
chain are manufacturers. The RTC Group
of companies, for instance, has three
core divisions: recruitment, training and
conferencing. Their head office is at the
attractive Derby Conference Centre –
in a building that in 1938 was the first
purpose-built training college for railway
staff. So it is still performing its original
function today.
They serve the whole spectrum of
labour market needs, from blue-collar
to white-collar rail specialists, and
technical and safety-critical training
for the rail industry. In 2008, RTC
trained 2,014 people in rail safety,
2,700 people in rail signals and
telecoms, and placed 1,900 people
in technical and engineering roles.
They have made the most of their
chances to expand beyond their core
business in the rail industry, and now
provide training and technical advice
to the fire service, the healthcare and
the renewable energy industries – and
through the Derby Conference Centre,
they have even expanded into the
wedding market.
Jon Seddon, of Bombardier, says,
“One of the features of working with
small local businesses is that through
working with us, they’re able to access
markets outside their normal reach.
In a typical project, we’ll have 60 to
70 businesses locally supporting us
to deliver contracts.”
We wouldn’t be able to compete on the world
stage without world-class suppliers. And that
goes for the small company with five employees,
as well as the bigger ones. They need to be
world-class for us to compete. And they are.
24
The car industry – holding
on through recession
From motorcycles, to specialist off-road vehicles, from niche 4x4s to heavy
duty construction machinery – a wide variety of vehicles are manufactured
in the East Midlands.
Toyota investing in Derby
4,000 people build Avensis and Auris
cars for the Japanese car firm Toyota at
Burnaston. There are over 28 million
cars currently registered in the UK,
so it’s a large market. But most of the
models that come out of the Burnaston
plant are exported to Europe and even
further afield.
The global recession is hitting the car
industry hard all over the world. And
Toyota in Derby is no exception.
In a market where global demand fell
so sharply that there was no more room
on dealers’ lots for any new stock,
Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other car
manufacturers in the UK have been
forced to make major cuts in production.
The economic climate is still tough,
but so far Toyota has managed the
impact by laying off temporary workers
and reducing hours and pay.
Though it’s a less well-known name to many
people outside the region, ZF is a German company
employing over 60,000 people in 26 countries – it’s
also one of the top 15 suppliers to the automotive
industry in the world, making driveline and chassis
technology. One of their three production centres in
the UK is at Lenton in Nottingham.
Since opening in 1992, Toyota has invested over
1 billion pounds in Burnaston, and has
produced nearly 3 million cars in Derby –
most for export around the world.
Last year, the 4,000 people working at Burnaston
produced 110,785 Avensis cars and 102,619
Auris cars.
Toyota has invested heavily in its local
team and so is reluctant to lay them off,
even in a recession. They acknowledge
that their long-term competitiveness
relies on retraining and progressive
investment in the skills of the workforce.
Currently, over 2,500 employees are
studying for a qualification in Business
Improvement Techniques, and many
others take part in a range of workplace
and college-based training courses.
Toyota is still committed to Derby and,
as provider of jobs and apprenticeships
to so many young people in the city,
it is an important asset for the region
long-term.
The region boasts over 500
suppliers to the car industry
Not every business in the automotive
industry turns out finished vehicles.
Over 500 companies in the East
Midlands play their part in the supply
chain of the car manufacturers. They
make, for example, electrical and
mechanical systems for chassis and
engines; they work on technology to
develop fuel cells; and, from emissions
to recycling, they are contributing to
greener vehicles.
All of this makes the region a more
attractive place for the big car
companies to make cars and invest
in jobs.
JCB claim that you’ll find one of their vehicles in every corner
of the world. The company was founded in nearby Staffordshire
in 1945, and is now one of the world’s top three manufacturers of
construction equipment, employing 8,000 people in factories in
the UK, Brazil, North America, India, China and Germany. JCB
has had to make major changes to survive the recession, including
some redundancies and periods of short-time working. But despite
this, JCB still employs around 3,000 people in the East and West
Midlands, including a substantial factory in Foston, Derbyshire.
Part of the firm’s strategy to survive the recession has been their
special training programme with Derby College.
US firm Caterpillar is another international manufacturer of big
construction equipment with operations in the region, based in
Desford, Leicestershire. Caterpillar also used training courses to
support staff through short-time working, and has had to lay off
around 250 workers in the last nine months.
26
Reinventing for
a greener world
Society is having to adapt to the challenges of climate change. In the
future we need to be flying in planes with more efficient engines, driving
greener cars, and increasingly going back to the train.
So the manufacturing companies in the East Midlands, which play such
a significant role in the transport industries worldwide – and drive the
local economy – are already working hard to deliver ‘greener’ solutions.
Rolls-Royce believes that technology has a central role
to play in finding answers to the climate change challenge.
So, of the £885 million the company invested in research and
development last year, almost two thirds is focused on finding
new environmental solutions.
Since commercial aviation began in the 1950s, they have
helped to reduce fuel burn per passenger kilometre in aircraft
by 70%. So inventing new ways to make their engines more
environmentally friendly is not new to them. But global
warming is now a real threat to the planet, which gives their
efforts a new urgency. Passengers are concerned about their
carbon footprint – but demand for air travel is still growing.
Governments all over the world are making commitments
to cut C02 emissions.
When the new ‘Trent 1000’ engine goes into service on the
Boeing 787, it will be 12% more efficient than its predecessor
the ‘Trent 800’, which went into service in 1996. So Rolls-Royce
is optimistic that it is possible to make further improvements
in fuel efficiency in the future.
In their marine business, they are seeking inspiration from the
natural world. The motion of a fish tail – tuna fish specifically
– is one of the most efficient hydrodynamic systems on the
planet; far beyond what any man-made system can achieve
today. So Rolls-Royce researchers are on a long-term project
to explore how that can be adapted as a propulsion system
for ships.
In the business of research, there are no certainties of success.
But the whole aerospace industry is now focused on finding new
solutions, which will require a joined-up approach – with success
resting on the innovation and ingenuity of the engineers.
Bombardier is working with the government and train
operators to design and deliver new, greener trains – using less
Offshore wind on the Lincolnshire Coast
Last October, the government gave consent
for gas company Centrica to develop the Lincs
Offshore Wind Farm 8 kilometres off Skegness
on the Lincolnshire Coast. It could become
a 250 megawatt project, meeting the energy
needs of around 170,000 British Gas customers.
The UK’s long coastline means that wind has
the potential to be an abundant and clean energy
source for the future. The Lincs wind farm would
be near the recently developed wind farms of
Lynn and Inner Dowsing, and could generate
CO2 savings of between 300,000 and 710,000
tonnes each year.
diesel fuel or electricity for their journeys. The company’s ECO4
initiative is developing technologies that hope to give an overall
energy saving to train operators of up to 50%.
Toyota has fitted all Avensis cars, which are manufactured
in Derby, with new CO2-reducing enhancements, as standard.
The Valvematic reduces CO2 emissions by 26%, while increasing
power by 20%.
Obviously, it is easier to ensure that new plant and investment
meet the new environmental standards, but Toyota has decided
to set itself a challenge. Their goal is that even older-generation
facilities, including the plant at Burnaston, will play their part
in responding to climate change. They say their strategy is to be
‘lean, green and mean’, and they hope that initiatives like this
will serve as industry-leading prototypes for sustainable production.
There were 881,000
jobs in low carbon and
environmental goods and services in 2007-8
– and research commissioned by the government estimates
that this could grow by 45% over the next eight years.
The East Midlands has 3,400 companies and
62,000 employees producing low-carbon
goods and services – 7% of the UK total.
28
East Midlands – Britain’s
largest freight airport
A
bove all though, East Midlands Airport is a big business
Thanks to the big
centre. It is Britain’s largest pure-freight airport. With 89%
expansion in recent
of the English and Welsh landmass within four hours truck
years of low-fare airlines, drivetime to the airport, it is the gateway for Britain’s exports to the
more and more people
world – as well as the imports used by our businesses and sold in our
from Derby, Nottingham shops. Global companies like United Parcel Service and DHL have
their primary UK base at the airport, which also provides support
and Leicester set off on
their holidays from East to other logistics operations, such as Royal Mail and TNT.
Midlands Airport. The
airport plays a big role in
connecting local people
East Midlands Airport imported and exported
to over 90 leisure and
nearly 300,000 tonnes of cargo from around
business destinations in the world during last year alone.
Europe and the rest of
the world.
Over 7,000 people are employed on the airport site,
representing some 100 businesses.
The express
cargo industry supports over
10,000 jobs in the East Midlands region today –
which could grow to 15,000 in the future
as global trade expands.
30
Global commerce revitalises
the local economy
The opening of Westfield Derby in November 2007 changed the city’s
retail offer overnight. People from across Derbyshire who used to go to
Nottingham – one of the country’s top ten retail centres – can now shop
right on their doorstep. But shopping is no longer a local business.
W
estfield – an Australian company and the
largest owner of shopping centres in the
world – invested to upgrade and extend the
1970s Eagle Centre. This was the first UK development
for the company, which cost £340m in total. The
international investment not only enabled the rapid
development of a new retail centre in Derby, but helped
to improve the streets, pavements and public buildings
across the city centre.
Nearly 3,000 new retail jobs have been created, with many of
these going to local people who were previously unemployed,
which will help the centre to have a positive knock-on effect for
the whole area. Janine Bone, Westfield Derby’s General Manager,
says that quality of service is an area where retailers can offer
a point of difference. “Our retailers who invest in customer
service skills, in particular, see it as a way they can excel against
their competitors. In addition, it’s really important that staff are
upskilled to handle IT. The retail environment today involves
complex computer systems, for instance, for ordering or tills.
Having good skills in those things is becoming increasingly
more important.”
In addition to the well-known UK names, such as Marks and
Spencer and Debenhams, the new centre has brought in a range
of international names – such as Spain’s Zara, France’s Lacoste,
and South Africa’s Spur. There are now 170 stores at Westfield,
100 of which are new to Derby.
“Derby is pretty resilient in the current difficult climate,” says
Janine, “The high tech industry that we have here is continuing
to attract good orders into the city – and there’s a wide diversity
of employment. We’re not just reliant on one industry.”
With consumers cautious about how they spend in the recession,
retailers have been hit along with the manufacturing industries.
Yet, over time, as the economy recovers, the presence of all these
big names could entice still more international retailers to locate
in Derby.
The high tech industry that
we have here is continuing to
attract good orders into the city
– and there’s a wide diversity
of employment. We’re not just
reliant on one industry.
Australia’s largest shopping centre
owner, Westfield, invested in the
£340 million upgrade of
Derby’s retail complex.
Since Westfield opened, retail
spend in Derby went up a
whopping £245 million,
to £683 million in total.
32
A
ll sorts of businesses will
help shape the future
of the East Midlands.
Some global success stories have
grown from small beginnings.
Starting small –
growing global
34
Pennine Healthcare
a family business competing
on a global stage
A
lmost 300 people in
Derby work for Pennine
Healthcare. Still a family
business, run by Liz Fothergill
whose father founded it over
forty years ago, it has grown
into a successful international
manufacturer. On any given day,
Pennine makes over 300,000
plastic products, such as surgical
suction tubes or oxygen
catheters for use in operating
theatres or intensive care units.
And they produce a wide range
of what are called ‘custom
procedure packs’ – with
everything you might need for
a particular surgical procedure;
a coronary by-pass or C-section
delivery, for instance.
“Pennine came out of engineering
in the late 60s, quite by accident”,
says Liz Fothergill, “because of
a walking stick with three prongs
on the end that was developed by
my father for his mother who had
terrible arthritis and couldn’t pick
up her knitting wool off the floor.
Being the entrepreneur he was, he
thought, “Well, let’s see if we can sell
a few.” We had this little mail order
advert and we used to sell them for
7s 6d, I think it was. So my childhood
was spent writing out envelopes to
send these walking sticks to people
who sent in postal orders.
“When it was written up in a
healthcare journal, one of the very
first importers of plastic medical
disposables from Sweden, happened
to see it and contacted my father
to ask if he knew anything about
injection mouldings and plastics.
He said, “No, but I’ll learn.” Because
that’s the sort of person he was.
So within about a year, we’d all got
involved in plastics, extrusion,
injection moulding and fabrication.
The very first product we developed
was an infant mucus extractor and
that product is still in our range today
– more than 40 years later.
“My father loved the early days, the
invention, doing the deals. He would
have hated the regulatory affairs, the
e-auctions, the hoops you have to go
through. But I think he’d have enjoyed
coming to a sales meeting and meet
some of our distributors around the
world; he would enjoy that.
“I remember the excitement of our
first export order – which was to
Holland in 1980. It was so important
to us then because European standards
were much higher than the UK in
those days. So we needed to raise our
game, from a packaging, a labelling,
a regulatory affairs point of view.
So once our products were fit to sell in
Europe, it then gave us a competitive
edge in the UK.”
36
The fact is that today
all these products could
easily be made in a
lower price economy, in
China, in India and to
some extent they are.
Exports have grown enormously over
the past five years and around 40%
of Pennine’s production now goes
overseas each year. “I know how much
satisfaction it gives people to know
that what they’re making is being used
in hospitals in New Zealand, Saudi
Arabia, Chile and Hong Kong, as well
as here.
“But the fact is that today all these
products could easily be made in a lower
price economy, in China, in India, and
to some extent are. So we’ve obviously
got to keep the labour content of our
manufacturing really low. That’s why
you see a lot of automation in Pennine.
And that’s been manufactured in-house;
we build our own machinery. I think
our success is that engineering
expertise which has been inherent
in Pennine’s history.
“But even while we’re automating
what we do here, the emerging
countries will still be doing it much
more cost effectively with people
who are paid very low rates to do it
manually. So we’ve got to compete
through our excellence in service
delivery. That means we’re able
to offer short delivery times or
modification to products, depending
on what our customers want. That’s
why we are still competitive.
“The world has become a very small
place and globalisation has affected us
in many ways. Some of them are good
and some are much more challenging.
Anybody now who issues a tender for
procurement of goods, whether it’s
for NHS suppliers in the UK or the
government of Dubai, they have access
through the internet to their suppliers
all over the world. So we would be
competing on an equal footing with
manufacturers in India, China, Korea,
Taiwan. So we all have to perform to
a similar set of global standards.
“You don’t succeed just by filling in
a price on the tender and sending a few
samples. It’s about building long term
relationships with those distributors
and adding value to what they’re
trying to do. We have lots of
distributors around the world, and
some of them have been with us for
many, many years.
“Certainly we see ourselves as part
of a global market. There are the
multinationals and then there are
the smaller companies like ourselves.
And I think we all have something to
learn and something to gain from
globalisation. And, of course, those
new emerging markets, in themselves,
are becoming important.”
The biggest transformation that
Pennine has seen in twenty years was
the result of their investment in ‘lean
manufacturing’; taking out waste.
As Liz explained “It isn’t just taking
waste out of the engineering processes.
It’s about everyone in the business
having an appreciation of why it matters
to reduce waste; waste in equipment,
waste in machine downtime. We’ve
even trained all the office team in
‘lean’ office. It’s all about asking
ourselves, ‘Are we doing things just
because we’ve always done them like
that?’ It’s opening people’s eyes to
doing things in a different way.
“It has really empowered people who
know what they’re doing on the shop
floor. Who’ve done it for years, but
somehow didn’t have so much of a
voice. Now, as part of the ‘lean’ project
groups, they can say what they see
that needs re-thinking They take
enormous pride in that and I can’t
over-estimate how fantastic it’s been
for us.
“To play on a global stage, to be
sustainable, you’ve got to be
enormously enthusiastic. You’ve got
to think that every little piece of
business, every order that comes
through the door, whether it’s for £50
or £500,000, you’ve got to think that
They may only cost
a few pence, but they
are potentially life
saving products.
Certainly we see
ourselves as part of a
global market. There
are the multinationals
and then there are the
smaller companies
like ourselves.
it’s something precious. And that there’s somebody out
there who wants that business. Don’t forget that you’re
only as good as your last order.”
Delphine Demily-Pickett is Pennine’s Export Manager.
She travels frequently, building relationships with
distributors and customers. “I’m from France but have lived
here for over fifteen years. I can say to other young people
that it is an amazing experience to move overseas. When
I came here, I felt very welcome both personally and
professionally. And when I go back to France, people
are so proud that I have gone abroad and have lived
something different.”
Delphine is valued by the company for her ability with
languages but also for her appreciation of the nuances
of different cultures and different countries. “We need a
good office team with language skills. You need a fantastic
regulatory affairs team too,” says Liz. The range of skills
needed across the Pennine business is very broad. “It would
be hard to imagine now employing somebody who didn’t
have basic IT skills, though sadly not everyone has them.
And we need sales people. Very importantly, we need
skilled chartered engineers and software specialists. People
who can look at a new product we’ve been asked to devise,
and from something very simple build it into something
we can actually manufacture. And we need people with
clinical skills to understand the basics of surgery and
biology.” Liz is emphatic that her need for skilled people
has risen over the years and will continue to rise. “After all,
these are healthcare products. They may not cost hundreds
of pounds, they may only cost a few pence, but they are
potentially life saving products. And people have to be
trained in that and they have to understand the full gamut
of what they are doing.
“Going back 35 years, I didn’t expect to be doing this job.
I trained as a librarian. I came here for a six-week summer
holiday job. So to me it’s been the most wonderful career.
I could never have imagined doing anything as exciting.”
38
A creative culture
in the East Midlands
The creative industries in the UK punch above their weight,
representing more that 7% of the economy today. Everyone
associates the East Midlands with engineering strength, but
creative firms are beginning to bubble up across the region.
Did you know?
Around 15,000 people in Nottingham
work in creative jobs Ð and the city has
around 3,700 students in creative arts
and communications.
Local fashion designer Paul Smith, born in
Beeston, founded his own fashion label which has
become a world-renowned brand. He was
knighted by the Queen in 2000.
The Games
Workshop has grown to be the
world leader in tabletop fantasy and futuristic
battle games.
When Nottingham Contemporary Art
Gallery opens in Autumn 2009, it will be one
of the largest spaces of its kind in the UK.
Alexander Taylor studied furniture and
product design at Nottingham Trent. His famous
‘Fold’ lamp is now in the permanent collection
of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Lara Croft of Tomb
Raider fame is a Derby
girl. She was developed
by Derby company Core
Designs, based at Pride
Park, in the late 1990s Ð
but left to go to the US
on a franchise in 2003.
She has become the most
famous female videogame character, according
to The Guinness Book of
World Records.
40
Creativity in a digital world
Twenty-seven small creative companies – from animation to textiles,
to digital photography and film-making – have their home at Friar Gate
Studios, a purpose-built facility in Derby city centre, open since 2006. The
centre was developed by Derby City Council, the East Midlands Development
Agency, and the Derby and Derbyshire Economic Partnership, and supported
by other local institutions, like Rolls-Royce, as a creative hub for the city.
Delta Echo Media
A
shley Sims is a one-man band – inventor,
television producer and salesman all rolled
into one. Working out of Friar Gate Studios,
Ashley works with companies across the UK.
“Right now, I’m producing an angling show – angling’s
the biggest participatory sport in the UK. I’ve always been
based in Derby – it’s a beautiful area. But all my clients are
national and international. If you come up with creative
ideas, you need to get out and about to spread them. Over
time, this will help to bring up the area as well. The world
is getting more competitive, so the better you are, the
better your chance at survival. In the creative industries,
this means being ready to adapt – and to do more
freelance work.”
It is a turning point at the
minute because there are quite
a few creative businesses here
within Friar Gates, but I think
there will be more to come.
“I’d say, ‘If you’re thinking about setting up your own
business, go for it because you don’t know until you try.
I thought that I’d have to be a salesperson, I’d have to be
a sharp sort of double glazing salesman type, really pushing.
But you don’t need to be that way. You just need to naturally
be able to sell your business, which we’ve done so far and
hopefully we will continue to do in years to come.”
Andrew, Mark and Ashley see their businesses as the start of
something in the region. “It is a turning point at the minute
because there are quite a few creative businesses here at Friar
Gate, but I think there will be more to come.”
Word of Mouth Creative
R
adio veterans Andrew Upton and Mark
Burrows started Word of Mouth Creative
– an audio production company – two
years ago. Worried that worldwide changes in the
radio industry could make them redundant, they
decided to take the plunge and start up their own
business in their hometown.
“Derby was a great location to start a creative company
because of Friar Gate Studios and the support available to
us. We were one of the first tenants in Friar Gate Studios,
and it was a great place to get started; they helped us
with the installation of our technology,” says Mark
Burrows, “and since we’re in a nice building in a great
location, we get noticed”.
The budding business – which includes radio commercials,
museum voice-overs, podcasts and websites – reaches far
beyond Ford Street in Derby city centre.
clients from Brighton to Sierra Leone in Africa. We have
clients we’ve never seen or met, around the world. To
make our products, we work with people from Australia
to Spain to Nottingham down the road. It’s down to
technology,” explains Andrew Upton. “These days we
record everything remotely and everything is delivered
via ISDN lines. And delivering audio via MP3s and all of
that kind of thing has had an influence. The internet has
basically enabled us to work all over the world.”
“My business partner and I were both local lads. For
what we do, technologically we don’t have to be here;
we could be anywhere in the world. But everybody we
know and love is here in Derby. Gone are the days when
you got an apprenticeship and retired from the same
company at 65. In recent years we’ve seen lots of small
businesses spring up from people who thought they had
jobs for life but then they find they don’t so they have to
go out and do something of their own, which is exactly
what we did.”
We’re based here in Derby but none of the people we
work for are actually in Derby believe it or not. We’ve got
In recent years we’ve seen lots of small businesses spring up from people who
thought they had jobs for life but then they find they don’t so they have to go out
and do something of their own, which is exactly what we did.
World culture comes
to the East Midlands
Quad, Derby’s brand-new cultural centre, is one of the newest additions to
the local scene. Occupying a prime position on the Market Place, it opened in
September 2008. While Quad’s modern architecture has attracted controversy,
the venue is hoping to bring more global culture to Derby – including films,
exhibitions and workshops.
T
his year’s Format 09 –
an international festival
of photography staged
around the city centre – brought
in artists from countries as
diverse as China, Turkey,
Switzerland and Israel, as well
as the UK. Quad is about to host
an artist in residence from
Chongqing in South West China,
who will create a brand new
show for the gallery.
Keith Jeffrey, Director of Quad,
has been in the city three years and
feels he has already seen a change in
attitudes “People have a much broader
Graham Lucas Commons
42
What places like Quad
do is make creativity visible.
It’s a point where people can
find out what’s going on and
go to get inspired.
Graham Lucas Commons
Jane & Louise Wilson by Jerry Hardman Jones
Graham Lucas Commons
44
vision now than they used to. They want different
things from where they live. With the internet and
through social networking and TV and so on, it’s far
easier to reach out to the world than it ever has been.”
Quad’s workshops and training sessions attract lots of
young people. “The biggest buzz was the Quad’s young
people’s forum the other week. It was fantastic to see a
bunch of kids who hadn’t used a camera before coming
here, showing their own film. They got so excited by
what they had done.
It was a really
emotional experience
Since opening in 2008,
for all of us.” Quad
the Quad has had 150,000
offers a whole range
people visit – 20% more
of courses from
family friendly
than expected.
activities where you
can make animated
Christmas cards right through to video editing courses
for professionals.
But in a community that is so heavily associated with
engineering, does Keith Jeffrey feel that a cultural centre
will ever be really appreciated? “I think engineering and
culture are just different forms of creativity. Places like
Rolls-Royce and Bombardier and Smiths of Derby, these
are engineering companies who put creativity at the
heart of their process – perhaps they don’t put it like this
– but they are making things, and doing new things in
a way which gives them competitive advantage. Places
like Quad give a different spin on that. What we need to
do is foster a culture where creativity and talent can
really flourish within the city.”
Quad’s first show was almost entirely about Derby’s
engineering heritage and Keith Jeffrey sees that an
inspiration for today. “In terms of the knowledge
economy, the digital economy and that whole world,
it is all about one form of creativity or another. Places
like Quad are crucial to that. We’re helping people
shape their own destiny, giving them skills and identity,
and most of all, giving them hope and opportunity”.
“What places like Quad do is make creativity visible.
It’s a point where people can find out what’s going on
and go to get inspired.”
46
‘Up-skilling’ at
Derby University
With campuses in Chesterfield and Buxton, as well as Derby, Derby University
provides flexible courses to 20,000 students, sixty per cent of whom are mature
students. So, for many of them, getting a degree is a matter of juggling a course
with a family and a job.
N
ick Bray, who works for
Hanson Redbank locally,
is one of the University’s parttime mature students who picked up
his studies to help him progress at
work. “When I took on a management
role, I hit a plateau. I needed to gain
additional skills and industry
knowledge to do my job better. In my
industry, knowledge has traditionally
been passed on from generation to
generation, but times have changed.
Now, it’s more specialised. There are
different technologies and greater
competition from cheaper sources to
contend with. So my manager put me
on an NVQ3 course in clay technology
at Doncaster College in 2006. When
that finished, I started a university
foundation degree at University of
Derby. It’s a management course
specific to our industry where you
learn both on-site and from books.”
25% of people in the East Midlands
have a university degree, but 13%
leave school with no qualifications.
64% of all employees in the region
participated in training in 2007.
Making it easier for business to
provide training
Thanks to £12 million of funding from the
Higher Education Funding Council and the
East Midlands Development Agency, the
University has recently established a new
corporate initiative which is all about
making it easier for businesses to provide
training for their employees. Paul Wilkinson,
Corporate Sales Director, joined the
university after twenty years in businesses,
with big brand names such as Bass and Mars.
“We’re very fortunate in this region because
of the number of companies which are very
international in their outlook. Clearly, the
agenda for today’s business is how to adapt to
change and globalisation; the impacts of that
are felt everywhere. So one of the things we’d
like to do is help transfer the skills that those
bigger companies have into some of the
smaller ones to help them compete.”
At a time when a business can no longer
think within national boundaries, people are
having to think internationally about what
it will take for them to compete in this new
environment, he says. “That’s why I believe
that skills are the start of everything.”
In his nine years at Hanson Redbank, Nick
Bray has seen some of those shifts happen
first hand. “It was a family-owned business
when I started nine years ago, but now it’s
a global company. First we were taken over
by Hanson in 2006, and then Heidelberg
Cement from Germany took over Hanson.
Today, we’re one of the world’s largest
manufacturers of building materials. In the day-today sense, my working life still feels relatively local,
but we’re part of such a vast company now.”
Earlier this year, the Derby University launched
a government backed skills development fund of
£250,000, dedicated to helping local companies
offer training opportunities, even in the current
economic recession. Paul Wilkinson detects a
difference in the responses of businesses in this
recession, compared to previous downturns. “They
are taking a different view on what they are cutting
back on and what they are not. We are seeing
a lot more companies working very collaboratively
with their employees. Where in past times, maybe,
training would have been one of the first budgets to
be cut, this time people are actually saying that they
need to use this time to train their staff into areas
which will be important in the upturn.”
Paul has already worked for five different companies
in his own career and sees that as the way working
life will increasingly be. “The need for re-skilling is
a fact of life for today’s workforce.”
One of the things we’d like to
do is help transfer the skills that
those bigger companies have into
some of the smaller ones to help
them compete.
48
Young talent stepping up
New Roundhouse development
for Derby College
Derby College’s £46 million development at Pride Park
opens in September 2009.
Derby College is embarking on a new drive to boost the
local economy, by increasing science and technology skills
and promoting entrepreneurship. The Roundhouse has
transformed a massive rail repair shed into a state-of-theart facility offering practical courses in everything from
engineering and construction to design. And more locallyfocused trades will be catered for too, like care, catering
and beauty. Many students are studying courses funded by
local engineering companies.
Ashley Bramley at 21 has high ambitions
for his future
Having the Higher National Diploma will
allow me to apply for higher jobs. At Rolls-Royce
I’m working on the SUV, a new plane engine that’s
going to get a lot of attention when it’s finished.
Every day I speak to people of many different
nationalities: Chinese, Americans, Germans. I had
to choose between engineering and marine biology.
I’ve always liked reptiles and fish. And I’m already
in the process of setting up my own company
selling equipment and feeding for people who have
reptiles as pets. I know it’s quite a small market,
but I’m a bit of an entrepreneur. I can definitely
see myself running a big company one day.
The Roundhouse has transformed
a massive rail repair shed into a stateMohamed Ali at 19 came to Derby
of-the-art facility.
from Libya
“Derby is a part of UK plc. We’re affected by how the
country reacts to global markets – for example, the rise
in manufacturing in China and India will have a direct
impact on us. The only way we can respond is through
skills. The fundamental principle is that we’re making
every effort to prepare young people for an uncertain
future, where they may have two or three jobs in their
lifetime. In Derby College, we don’t do anything in
isolation. All of our courses are connected to companies,
from retail and hospitality right through to engineering.
And business skills are an integral part of our curriculum,”
says David Croll, Principal of the College.
I came here in September 2008. I was
supposed to go and work in the oilfields but
I was chosen for this opportunity and they
paid for me to come here. Next year I will go to
Derby University. If I did the Higher National
Diploma course back home it would take four
years. But the British qualification is more highly
recognised worldwide. It’s very different – back
home we don’t do our own research, we just take
exams all the time. When I go back, I want to use
what I’ve learnt at the college to teach others.
25,000 students study at Derby College, which offers
special training programmes to almost 1,000 employers
across the East Midlands, training over 11,000 employees
every year.
As part of its strategy for the recession JCB worked
with Derby College to provide training for nearly
800 employees, to improve their skills in performance
manufacturing and problem solving. It was one of the biggest
employee training initiatives in JCB’s history.
Left: The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China
50
Nottingham in the People’s Republic of China
The universities of the East Midlands – Loughborough, Nottingham, Leicester,
de Montfort, Derby and Nottingham Trent – are all assets for the region and
its cities.
One of the best-known is Nottingham University, a member of the ‘Russell
Group’ made up of the UK’s twenty major research-intensive universities.
Building on its strong reputation in Britain, Nottingham University has stepped
onto the global stage. In the past decade, it has expanded its presence in Asia
and now has campuses in Malaysia and China. In 2004, it was the very first
higher education institution to establish a campus inside the People’s Republic.
And today, 3,700 students in Ningbo are studying for a University of
Nottingham UK degree.
The site in University Park, West Nottingham also hosts two of Rolls-Royce’s
prestigious University Technology Centres – of which there are now twentynine in a growing network around the world. Focused on engineering research
to support the manufacturing sector, this strong partnership also boosts the
flow of knowledge between Nottingham and Derby, and helping create links
across the region.
Paddy Murray at 19 was selected
for a new international fellowship
Last year, he was one of 100 enterprising
eighteen and nineteen year olds chosen from
all over the country to be the first Prime
Minister’s Global Fellows, in a new scheme
designed to give young people a close-up
experience of life in one of the major countries
driving the new global economy. So, in the
summer of 2008, he spent six weeks in India:
I had no idea what globalisation really
meant for me or for the UK. It was only
through meeting people in India that I feel
I now understand; I get it. In Mumbai I spent
two weeks in a school. What struck me most
was how hard they work compared to us.
Not once did I see a teacher having to
discipline anyone. They are so passionate
about learning. They know they are
competing with the rest of their country
and that doing well in their studies is the
only way of getting a good job.
It made me realise that back here we can get
by without having to work too hard. But
I don’t think this will be the case in 10 or 20
years from now. We need a reality check.
The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China
In 2004 Nottingham University
was the very first higher
education institution to
establish a campus inside the
People’s Republic.
Today 3,700 students in
Ningbo are studying for a
University of Nottingham UK degree.
These days companies know that they can
outsource to places like India and tap into
millions of dedicated workers. I spent two
weeks at Shell’s research centre in Bangalore.
What surprised me most was finding that
Shell hadn’t located there to sell petrol,
but because of the talented graduates and
workforce they can employ.
To be a science or engineering graduate in
India is considered to be the best you can get.
And although I’m a history student myself,
I understand that for the future of cities like
Derby and Nottingham we really need to be
churning out more engineers and scientists –
to match countries like India.
52
Building blocks
for the future
M
any industries and business have
grown up in Derby and the East
Midlands since the industrial
revolution. Some, like lace and silk, are
long gone now. Others, like trains and
planes, are serving world markets and
have global workforces.
Like the rest of the UK today, the region is going
through a tough recession. But looking ahead,
one thing is clear. The work that we do, the way
that we live, and the cities that we live in, are
all changing.
International trade and commerce flows through
this region in the centre of England. And over
the past twenty years, it has become more and
more plugged into the global economy. Literally
hundreds of smaller companies are stepping up to
fit into global supply chains. It is these businesses
that are the heart of the local economy.
At the same time, there are fewer of the basic
manufacturing jobs that were once its mainstay.
So although many of the companies based here
have been around for decades or more, becoming
a familiar part of the landscape, they are adapting
fast to new global realities.
Building up home-grown talent will be the surest
way to win in a world where the new industries
and new jobs will depend on skills and creativity,
technology and innovation. It is a big endeavour,
not only for individual businesses but for the
region as a whole.
And, everywhere across the region today, it is
already possible to identify what the building
blocks of the future will be.
Jane & Louise Wilson by Jerry Hardman Jones
The world
is changing
The last half-century has seen
unprecedented growth in international
commerce. Total world trade in 2000
was 22 times the level seen in 1950.
Falling telecommunications costs
have driven globalisation: in 1927
the first transatlantic phone call from
Columbia, Missouri to London lasted
6 minutes and cost $162 – it can now
be done for free over the internet.
In a ranking of the world’s top
companies, the UK has 3 in the top 25.
Last year, China had no companies in
the top 25 – it now has 4.
Investment now operates at a global
scale. In 2007-8 there were 1,573
investments into the UK, creating
more than 120 new jobs a day.