Support for manufacturing unveiled

Rolls-Royce is trying to fend off the loss of a major engines deal

Up to 2,400 jobs will be created or safeguarded under a £150 million package aimed at helping manufacturers take advantage of new technologies, especially in the aerospace industry, the Government has announced.

Engineering giant Rolls-Royce will receive £45 million in Government assistance towards investment of £300 million in four new UK manufacturing sites, including an additional facility at Barnoldswick, Lancashire, for the production of wide-chord fan blades for the Joint Strike Aircraft.

The Printable Electronics Centre in Sedgefield will create up to 1,500 jobs by 2014 under a £12 million expansion, while a £500,000 scheme to support the development of a centre of excellence for silicon design in the South West will lead to 100 new posts.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said the "significant" package of measures would help equip British manufacturers to take advantage of advanced technologies and new market opportunities shaping the UK's low-carbon industrial future.

Business groups and unions welcomed the announcement, although the Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) complained that it lacked the long-term strategic direction it believed was vital for the future competitiveness of manufacturing.

Rolls-Royce did not disclose the locations for the new sites, but the firm said it planned a new casting facility for turbine blades, a plant for the production of discs used in fans, compressors and turbines and a new factory to manufacture, assemble and test parts for new nuclear power stations.

The firm, which employs 23,000 people in the UK, also announced two research programmes which will focus on technologies to reduce the CO2 emissions of future aircraft programmes and accelerate new manufacturing methods.

In a visit to Visual Plant, a company in Cambridge specialising in touch-screen technology, Lord Mandelson said: "It is a complete myth that we do not make things in Britain any more.

"We are the sixth biggest manufacturing economy in the world. Manufacturing is one of our biggest exports and it is growing, but it will only grow if we keep ahead, using our science-based research.

"We are not going to find our future manufacturing success from the old style of factories and smoked stacked industries that generated our wealth in the past."