Reimagining materials and manufacturing together
Now is the time to reimagine manufacturing together. The UK has clear potential to become a world-class destination of choice for advanced low-carbon manufacturing.
Materials and Manufacturing Vision 2050
The UK has clear potential to become a world-class destination of choice for advanced low-carbon manufacturing. Now is the time to reimagine materials and manufacturing together.
Materials and manufacturing play a vital role in the UK economy through driving innovation, exports, job creation, productivity and growth. These sectors must also adjust to meet climate change targets, adopt new technologies and adapt to changing customer demands.
Innovate UK’s 2050 vision document is a re-imagination of materials and manufacturing together. It’s a document that delves into the challenges and opportunities that lie in front of the UK materials and manufacturing sectors in the coming decades.
Our strategic imperatives

Net zero and resource efficient
To understand and minimise the environmental impact across the full operation and whole product lifecycle.

Resilient and responsive
To mitigate risks from critical supply, national/global disruption and climate change therefore becoming increasingly resilient.

Technologically advanced and digital
To adopt digital and advanced technology to improve efficiency, visibility across supply chains and apply novel business models.
With more than 170 recent references analysed and more than 120 stakeholders consulted, this is one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind.
This document is a long-term view highlighting that:
- UK manufacturing faces urgent challenges such as climate, resilience and productivity
- UK manufacturing offers incredibly exciting opportunities and is a great career option
- UK has the talent and innovation infrastructure to realise its vision of being world-class
To support businesses and academia on this journey Innovate UK and its partners are funding various complementary programmes.
Each programme is designed to:
- Inspire – to improve awareness and expertise and to make the opportunity visible and compelling
- Involve – to bring relevant organisations and people together and to build aligned communities
- Invest – convene resources and to facilitate research, innovation and investment.
“Materials and manufacturing accounts for 61% of all business expenditure on UK R&D and in 2019 attracted 22% of all inward foreign direct investment in the UK economy”
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