Member Article

North East R&D expenditure among country's lowest but potential is huge, experts say

Expenditure on research and development (R&D) activities last year was much smaller in the North East than other regions, ONS data has revealed.

Statistics showing amount of money spent by businesses on R&D showed the North East was significantly behind other regions - as the South East continued to dominate the field.

The South East and home counties accounted for 44% of UK business R&D expenditure in 2012, and also employed 66,000 full time equivalent employees - 41% of total R&D employment.

Speaking at this week’s Return on Innovation conference at Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema, innovation expert Professor Roy Sandbach said the region was capable of supporting top flight innovation, but required a coordinated approach.

Speaking to Bdaily the former Proctor and Gamble global research leader said: “If we look at the recent expenditure across the regions, it’s clear the North East has a long way to go, but we have some excellent ingredients to make the region a competitive research destination.”

Simon Green, head of Business Support at Newcastle Science City said: “These figures clearly show that there’s a long way to go in making the North East more competitive as a host for R&D activity. We have huge potential in our world leading innovation in areas such as medicine, energy, computing and subsea engineering, and we need to maximise this.

“The big opportunity comes from the region’s ability to get businesses, universities, public and third sector organisations to work together on implementing innovation and being a test bed for new ideas.

“This is where initiatives like the Neptune Centre on the North Bank of the Tyne, the surface chemistry research collaboration between P&G, CPI and Durham University and the forthcoming Science Central development, can impact positively on collaborative innovation in the North East.”

Graphic showing R&D expenditure in regions

Nationally, pharmaceuticals remained the dominant product group for R&D expenditure with £4.2 billion being ploughed into UK businesses.

Motor vehicles and parts experienced the largest increase in expenditure of all sectors - representing £1.7 billion spending.

11% of all R&D spending went into computer programming and information services activities.

Crucially the survey, conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, highlighted a growing trend for R&D expenditure in the UK by foriegn owned business.

2011 was the first year that just over half of all business R&D expenditure in UK was conducted by foreign owned firms.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .