The government have just published their Foresight report on the future of UK manufacturing.
- The future of manufacturing – summary report (PDF, 2.4 MB)
- The future of manufacturing – project report (PDF, 5.5 MB)
There are a number of references to photonics enabled technology within the report, especially related to additive manufacturing and sensing, however you won’t find lasers or photonics mentioned once.
One of the key recommendations is for the High Value Manufacturing catapult to engage much more with SMEs.
As a benchmark the report highlights the UK export intensity (manufactured exports as a proportion of manufacturing output) which rose from 30% in 1991 to 47% in 2011. Most photonics companies export over 70% of their output with many exporting >90% of output, making photonics a leader in export intensity.
