Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
3 June 2026
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Northern Ireland Affairs Committee House of Commons
00:03 - 00:28
Speaker 4
This is our fourth session on economic growth, and I'd like to welcome Sam Turner, chief executive of Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center, and Stephen Morrison, Morrison, the head of Sustainable Livestock Systems and Agri Food and Bioscience Institute. So welcome both. Sam, what is the role of the advanced manufacturing sector in driving economic growth in Northern Ireland?
00:29 - 02:16
Speaker 7
So the advanced manufacturing sector is is one of the largest sectors in Northern Ireland. It it's a key area for productivity growth. It it it performs above the the the Northern Ireland average. And it has some huge strengths on a relative, you know, UK and global scale. So particularly in aerospace, it'd be one of the the the three kind of major aerostructures clusters in The UK, which is the only area where we have Boeing and Airbus on the same street effectively.
We can still ability to to to build test full air structures in in Northern Ireland, a real UK asset. We have a strong defense sector as well alongside that. Within aerospace interiors, we lead the world Northern Ireland in in in aerospace interiors and seating, around 40% of business class seating produced in Northern Ireland. There's also, a very strong materials handling sector at Middleston. That's where I've talked about the traditional heartlands in in the East and Northern Ireland.
In the in Middleston, we have a materials handling sector that produces 40% of the world's cushion screening equipment with a very strong capability around fabricated products and a lot of innovation around design and make, businesses who who traditionally kinda get on and do things on their selves and haven't had a huge amount of of, perhaps, funding support to deliver delivered. And then in semiconductors, lasers, we have Seagate, who are producing the readwrite heads for, their hard drives in the Northwest. They're currently the biggest producer of lasers in Europe and will be, then by eighteen months, the largest producer of lasers by volume in in the world. So we also have a strong life sciences sector and a and a very strong sort of cluster of cleantech companies, many of whom have spun out of the universities who who perform very well in terms of spinouts. The Queen's in the top three, I believe, in in terms of spinouts in The UK.
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