Sunderland named one of Europe's top investment locations

Sunderland has been named as one of the top four small European cities for foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy, and eighth top Northern European city for FDI strategy in a study of the most promising investment locations in Europe.

The study was carried out by fDi magazine, a Financial Times publication, and published this week.

Sunderland ranked higher than UK cities such as Cambridge, Reading, York and Peterborough in the small European cities for FDI strategy.

It also beat European cities Grenoble in France and Skopje in Macedonia in this category. In the ‘Top 10 Northern European cities- FDI strategy’ it was ranked above Sheffield and Cambridge in the UK.

Councillor Paul Watson, Leader of Sunderland City Council, said: “This is the first year Sunderland has entered the European Cities and Regions of the Future awards. It’s great news that Sunderland has won top rankings in two categories of this European-wide awards competition, and that both awards recognise the strength of our global inward investment strategy.

“Sunderland has the appetite, commitment and track record to ensure it makes things happen. Our pragmatic plan for growth has driven momentum, helped secure new business, and reinforced our determination to take a long-term view on inward investment.

Sunderland City Council’s business investment team has worked closely with the private sector to encourage more capital investment and new jobs to Sunderland in the last decade than any other city of its size across the UK.

Over the past ten years, it has helped to secure 14,500 jobs and £2.5 billion of capital investment to the city.

The City Council’s business investment team has focused its priorities around key industry sectors and the city centre.

The sectoral approach, linked to the city’S Economic Masterplan, builds on the success of industries that are already strongly represented in Sunderland such as automotive manufacturing, advanced engineering, transport and distribution, and customer and business services.

The city’s inward investment strategy also aims to fully exploit the potential of emerging sectors, taking advantage of the city’s key strengths in ultra low carbon vehicles, offshore wind and subsea engineering, and software technology development.

The fDi study states that: “On the whole, UK cities and regions performed well in fDi’s European Cities and Regions of the Future 2014/15, claiming top city and second place regionally” and that “UK cities performed well in the city rankings, particularly in the mid-sized, small and micro city categories.”

London and Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany were named respective winners of the European City and Region of the Future 2014/15.

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