The new investment includes £51m for compound semiconductors in South Wales and £68.3m for satellite applications at Harwell.
The bulk of the money, however, will be going to the High Value Manufacturing Catapult that includes £270m for the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) and the Energy Systems Catapult in Birmingham, as well as £65m for the National Composite Centre in Bristol working on new 3D printed materials and production technologies.
This funding comes after a previously announced £181m for other manufacturing projects in the north east, bringing the total to £960m.
Commenting Philip Hammond, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer said, “This £780 million investment will support innovators across the country to create the technologies of the future, and the better, highly-paid jobs we urgently need.
“The catapult network supports sectors and technologies that are going to be in high demand in the years ahead. It brings together the best of UK business, science and engineering to work side by side in research and development to ‘catapult’ products from ideas to market. It helps remove barriers to growth, which often can include access to finance, inadequate facilities or skills shortages.”
The catapults have over the past five years supported upwards of 3,000 small businesses to develop and exploit new technologies as well as training hundreds of apprentices and doctoral students. Last year at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, for example, 900 apprentices gained practical experience with the technologies used in modern manufacturing.
