The Black Country Industrial Cluster covers an inland area of the West Midlands across Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, and Wolverhampton. Our diverse and flexible industrial ecosystem makes our Industrial Cluster distinctive amongst all other UK clusters, and includes adaptable and competitive small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) comprising:
- more than 3,000 manufacturing companies - employing more than 50,000 people
- the centre of the UK metals and construction products sectors
- 80 leading firms in the metals and construction sectors that contribute more than £2bn to the regional economy and employ more than 12,000 skilled people
- national centres of excellence in brownfield remediation and the circular economy
Through our very first initiative ‘Repowering the Black Country’ we brought together a community of experts and regional organisations focused on addressing the unique challenge of how to achieve industrial decarbonisation across the UK’s diverse supply chains consisting of many thousands of dispersed and distributed sites. You can read more about the success of the ‘Repowering the Black Country’ project here.
As a consortium of organisations with expertise in leading industrial decarbonisation projects, the Black Country Industrial Cluster is now building on the region’s progress during the Repowering project, and also sharing our learnings across the UK.
Across the Black Country, we continue to bring inward investment to the region, share best practice with our members, advocate at a local and national level, and provide businesses with access to specialist energy engineering knowledge and consultancies.
Join us on our journey in the Black Country as we continue to support our unique industrial cluster to drive economic growth, improve competitiveness and enhance business resilience, during our transition to net-zero.
If you are based in a region outside of the Black Country, we are working with other industrial regions across the UK through a new Centre for Manufacturing Transition, and you can find more information here about this here.