UK needs integrated materials sector to drive growth, urges joint report

Article by Adam Duckett

MPI
Materials strategy launched with plea for industry to prevent it from gathering dust on a shelf

THE AUTHORS of a national materials strategy have warned that without concerted industry leadership their attempts to accelerate innovation will fail, holding back UK growth, skills, and security.

The calls were made in London last week as leaders from industry, research, and government gathered for the launch of a strategy which could underpin growth in sectors as varied as energy, consumer products, and telecommunications.

It’s estimated that some 52,000 people in the UK work directly in materials-specific roles, contributing £4.4bn (US$5.3bn) a year to the economy. Top employers include Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, and Tata Steel. The report’s authors say there is the potential to double the number of jobs by 2035.

David Knowles, CEO of the Henry Royce Institute, said at the launch: “Without your leadership, the strategy will fail. It's really important that you engage.”

Siloes and scaleup

The Henry Royce Institute initiated development of the strategy two years ago and has taken advice from more than 2,000 experts from across business, academia, research organisations, and government. The result is a plan to move beyond what it describes as the siloed efforts of the past to create an integrated materials sector that serves all the UK’s industrial growth. A key challenge will be addressing lengthy and expensive commercialisation cycles and addressing the UK’s habit of seeing the materials it develops at home being scaled up and commercialised abroad.

The strategy has not recommended the UK pursue specific technological solutions, instead picking 19 opportunities for innovation spread across six themes: energy, healthcare, infrastructure, surface technologies, electronics and sensors, and consumer products and polymers.

These include the development of novel battery chemistries and membranes, materials for industrial heat exchange and hydrogen transportation, nanofabrication techniques for quantum technologies, and bulk processing of sustainable plastic packaging. Success in these areas would help retain manufacturing and process industries by lowering energy costs and create new technologies and companies that bolster the economy, sustainability, and materials security.

Translation, translation, translation

The Henry Royce Institute/Chris Foster Photography
David Knowles, CEO of the Henry Royce Institute, said: "Without your leadership, the strategy will fail."

Asked on the sidelines of the event what is needed for the strategy to succeed, Knowles said industry and government must engage. The next steps he’d like to see taken include the creation of a business case and implementation plan for the strategy; the creation of a national materials innovation leadership group to push this forward; and an assessment of the infrastructure needed for scaleup and manufacture.

“I think the institutions like chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and materials, they've all got to come behind this and say, ‘this is the right thing’,” Knowles said. “We need to come together as a cohesive group.”

In terms of timings, Knowles says it is a ten-year strategy and if it succeeds then he expects dedicated working groups for each of the six themes will be formed to coordinate and deliver their specific opportunities.

“I don’t mean it won’t deliver things in the short-term, but I mean it’s got to have a long-term vision and direction.

“You heard me talk today about ‘translation, translation, translation’. There are some really quick wins in this, including some great technologies that are coming through around the transition to net zero concrete.”

Knowles was referring to a process developed at the University of Cambridge that is being scaled up at the Materials Process Institute (MPI) to make zero emissions steel and cement from a single process.

He added that some companies are having to go abroad to access scaleup capabilities. “That’s maybe where we need some investment, but it should be modest. We should also look at what [existing capabilities] we have got and what can we deploy better.”

Given the UK’s poor economic situation and demands for investment in public services, Knowles acknowledged that he’s not expecting a sudden influx of state investment.

“A lot of what we're talking about is going to be delivered by industry. So, industry have to have a major stake in that process, and they need to work together with government.”

Government can assist with some of the “blockers” to progress such as regulation and skills provision that Knowles said are stymying UK innovation in the likes of the biomedical and nuclear sectors. He added that they have a key role to play in developing the cross-cutting themes that the strategy identifies as being crucial to accelerating materials innovation.

Passports for materials

Chief among them is “materials 4.0” which could shorten the time it takes to commercialise innovations and help track materials as they move through the supply chain, providing them with something akin to a digital passport. This would be underpinned by a materials informatics framework that combines capabilities in modelling, large data, AI, and machine learning. The traceability it enables would support the development of life cycle analysis and a circular economy.

This echoes recommendations made last year in a report published by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s policy unit, supported by IChemE. It called for the government to establish a National Materials Data Hub to monitor and forecast supply chains, material flows, and material requirements for net zero infrastructure. Using the renewables sector as an example, the academy noted that a large offshore wind turbine can contain as much as 5,800 kg of neodymium magnets yet there is a lack of information on exactly how much of this critical material is locked up in all the wind turbines across the UK, and then what date these valuable magnets will become available for reuse in the car industry.

“I think it's one of the key enablers for sustainability,” Knowles said.

“We have to think about deploying technologies like blockchain. It’s one of the things I want to sit down with government to discuss. How do we go from where we are now? And where things have been developed in silos, now do them in a unified way.”

Reaction

Julia Sutcliffe, chief scientific advisor to the department of business and trade, noted how the strategy resonates with the the government's own

The government has been very supportive of the strategy, with Knowles saying they’ve “had a huge amount of dialogue”.

This includes science minister Lord Vallance who spoke at the event, welcoming the launch, and Julia Sutcliffe, chief scientific advisor to the department of business and trade, who was a member of the leadership group that developed the strategy.

Speaking at the launch, Sutcliffe noted how important materials innovation is to the economy, pointing to the Bessemer steel and Pilkington glass float processes, and the positive impact such developments can have.

“But we all know, don't we, that transitioning new technology and innovation into tradable outcomes is anything but simple,” she said.

“For the materials sector, this challenge is even more acute because when you're developing a new material, you might find yourself in a position where the standards, the regulation, the manufacturing and the scaling processes don't actually exist. So, you’re almost doing everything in parallel. All of that requires huge focus and collaboration across industry, academia, and government with aligned objectives. And quite excitingly, that is what we are seeing right now.”

She concluded that the materials strategy resonates with the government’s own industrial strategy which includes a focus on advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and digital technologies.

Sutcliffe said the government is working through 3,000 responses received during the industrial strategy consultation and expects to publish sectoral plans this spring that will outline the policies on innovation, infrastructure, skills, and regulation needed to support growth.

Industry intervention

Speaking at the launch, Pete Raby, CEO of Morgan Advanced Materials, called on his peers in industry to throw their weight behind the strategy.

Pete Raby, CEO of Morgan Advanced Materials, called for continued commitment from all involved

“Implementation is the hard bit. That is always the bit where it goes wrong. That is going to require commitment from everybody involved.”

He said that the UK materials sector suffers from a lack of people with the right skills. 

“I think there is some national work to do there. I hope the government can help with some of that. But I think there's also much that we need to do in industry, and I certainly look for my colleagues to help with that.

“I really hope this strategy can be a catalyst for a step change in capability, a step change in pace.”

Allan Cook, chair of the materials innovation leadership group, echoed these calls, opining the number of strategies he’s seen launched that end up gathering dust on a shelf. He pointed out “titans of the industrial landscape” present in the room, including representatives from the National Composites Centre, National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, and Warwick Manufacturing Group.

“Without your commitment and without the commitment of the people that are within your organisations, we are not going to turn this into an implementation and a reality.”

Joan Cordiner, IChemE Fellow and chair of the National Engineering Policy Centre Working Group on Materials and Net Zero that prepared the RAEng study published in October, welcomed the strategy’s launch.

She said: “The UK has world leading materials development expertise which should be capitalised on to deliver solutions for these key challenges. A strong strategy and cross-cutting innovation will drive the UK to develop a thriving economy in new materials, solutions for our challenges, and ensure resilience for the UK in materials needs.”

Those who contributed to the strategy include ScotChem, the universities of Sheffield, Cambridge, and Manchester, and representatives from Unilever, Rolls-Royce, and Victrex.

Article by Adam Duckett

Editor, The Chemical Engineer

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