production of leadingedge
novel processes.
Research and Innovation’s agship ‘Strength in Places
Fund’, has been won, with this designed to facilitate
the development of a business case that will then go
into the Strength in Places competition proper.
The hope is that somewhere between £20-30 million
could be secured next year.
To be headquartered in Rochdale, the plan for the
AMP Institute is that it will be centred around existing
capabilities and research excellence across the North
of England and reaching across the wider UK – the
many millions of hoped-for funding will not be splashed
out on a magni cent building, Edwards is keen to
emphasise, nor duplicate what already exists. “Industry
is telling us that they want somewhere physical to
come to, something like a safe space where they can
come and collaborate, that’s got some specialist
capability and gives them the space to work. But we’re
going to be very careful not to duplicate other things
that the taxpayers have already paid for. The majority of
any money won will be used to enable industry to get
LEAD FEATURE ADVANCED MACHINERY INNOVATION INITIATIVE
design and development going as quickly as possible,
kickstarting this revolution in manufacturing that we’re
looking for.” That said, there will be a modern, albeit
“modest” HQ building erected and some associated
capital investment.
In terms of sustained funding for the organisation,
he says: “The operating model is going to have to be
developed in a way that gets the greatest impact to
reach industry in the most economically viable and
sustainable way, without it being a barrier for industry
to take advantage of it.”
The AMP Institute has the support of local
government in Manchester and Yorkshire, universities,
further education establishments, industrial companies
and industry associations. One of the AMP Institute’s
prominent and key industrial boosters is Dr Tony
Bannan, OBE, chief executive of cer of Precision
Technologies Group (PTG) and Holroyd for some 10
years, but with a career in precision engineering
stretching back to 1980. Holroyd is a global leader in
thread/compressor-screw manufacturing
technology, while PTG boasts expertise in the
friction stir welding machinery area.
An enthusiastic supporter of the AMP
Institute, he has been a driving force in the
thinking that shapes it, along with Professor
Paul Shore, who boasts many years of
industrial and academic high precision
engineering experience, again starting in the
1980s, and who is today NPL’s head of
engineering. He is also a director at Loxham
Precision, a company that makes highly accurate
and novel machines (
Machinery covered the fruits
of earlier high precision research involving Shore and
Loxham in 2013 –
www.is.gd/obesuv ), while he is also
familiar with government/academia/industry research
funding interfaces.
Other industrial names familiar to Machinery readers
will be grinding specialist Fives Landis in Keighley, West
Yorkshire, (Landis Lund in a former guise) and its
associated UK operation in Cran eld, Beds, called Fives
Landis (Cran eld Precision). The former traces its
machine tool building operations back to 1837 (but
engineering on the site goes back another 170-odd
years – read Machinery’s 2013 article
www.is.gd/inofaz ), while the Cran eld operation has its
roots in 1968 as the Cran eld Unit for Precision
Engineering (CUPE), an establishment with
which Shore had a previous close
association (read Machinery’s 2014 report
on Cran eld Precision developments at
www.is.gd/ojagad ). Holroyd itself can
also lay claim to 150+ years of machine
building expertise, while Hudders eld
University has a long history of
Inset: Gareth
Edwards, National
Physical
Laboratory (NPL).
He is strategy lead
for industrial
digitalisation and
works in NPL’s
Strategy
Directorate
’s ’s products involving
Government seed funding of
£50,000, provided through UK
www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets | October 2020 11
Andrey Kuzmin/ stock.adobe.com
/obesuv
/inofaz
/ojagad
/www.machinery.co.uk
/stock.adobe.com