Rotherham's Advanced Manufacturing Park is key to town's productivity growth, new report finds

The Northern Powerhouse Partnership’s “Rotherham's economic transformation” report, published today with a foreword by former treasury minister Lord Jim O’Neill, explores how Rotherham’s productivity has grown by 64 per cent since 2004.

This puts it above any other town in the North over that time, research from the NPP finds.

Key to this success, the think tank says, is the AMP, which is situated on the former Orgreave colliery and the scene of the infamous “battle” between coal miners and police.

“An area once synonymous with the challenges of industrial decline, it is now home to one of Europe's most significant clusters of advanced manufacturing, research and engineering activity,” the report says.

This is supported by the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and now supports a cluster which brings together businesses like Boeing, Rolls-Royce and McLaren Automotive.

The NPP praises universities, business and the public sector for “working together around a shared economic purpose”.

Writing in The Yorkshire Post, Lord O’Neill said: “In America we would celebrate that sort of model and build around it. Too often in Britain we fail to recognise what we have.

“That partnership has helped create one of Europe’s most significant advanced manufacturing clusters on the former Orgreave site, bringing together businesses including Boeing, Rolls-Royce and McLaren Automotive alongside world-class research capability.

“The result has been a remarkable economic transformation, not just for the site itself but for Rotherham more broadly.”

South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard said: ““South Yorkshire powered the first Industrial Revolution. Today we are at the forefront of a new industrial revolution with Rotherham at its heart.

“For all too many people in South Yorkshire, since the death of our traditional industries, life hasn’t been very fair, or very fun.

“What’s happening in Rotherham, driven by a long-term plan and a partnership approach between the public and private sector, is showing that we can fight back against that sense of decline, building new industries of the future right here.”

Coun Chris Read, leader of Rotherham Council, added: “The story of Orgreave and its transformation into something genuinely worldleading at the Advanced Manufacturing Park is testimony to an extraordinary group of people, but it demonstrates a model which should inspire us for the future.

“Rotherham’s success story over the last decade is perhaps slightly obscured by the fact that hard work was undertaken in the typically determined, resilient but never showy style of our community.”