Conference News Supplements Meet the Midlands Supplement | Page 5

Investment potential Ian Flynn, inward invest manager at Invest Coventry and Warwickshire, talks to Martin Fullard and provides an overview on the region’s financial prosperity How has the Warwickshire region grown over the last decade? Could you give us a broad idea of how business and consumer events fair alongside the region’s economy? It’s been very good. We did some analysis recently and the Coventry and Warwickshire area has the highest productivity growth of any area since 2009. We’ve benefitted from the billions of pounds invested by Indian automotive giant Tata into Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR) over the last 10 years and a lot of that money has gone into research and development. JLR’s HQ is here, and we have the powertrain centre at Whitley as well as the new engineering centre at Gaydon. Over the last 10 years the standing of this area, in terms of global automotive, aerospace, and rail engineering has really developed, and certainly even in China but also Germany, the specialist skills and supply chain remains highly sought after. Our local SMEs do a lot of work for big European manufacturers. There’s also been investment from China, namely automotive giant Geeley, which bought London Taxis International to create the London Electric Vehicle Company. They also own Lotus and Volvo Cars. 5 Meet the Midlands Over the last 10 years the standing of this area, in terms of global automotive, aerospace, and Working with him and other local rail engineering partners, we have started to attract more shows that reflect our strengths has really in technology. For example, a number developed. of battery and EV events have come this way that are either new or relocating here for the first time. It’s a nice synergy between the events industry and the local industry. Are you confident that the current infrastructure can support and increase future large-scale events? Yes. Coventry as City of Culture encourages us to shine a light on local offerings and we’ve identified Coventry and Warwickshire spaces we have which creates an inward investment opportunity. We are gearing up to attract more hotel investments, in the city centre there are four star hotels next to the station and a madmen style redevelopment to the Coventry Telegraph building. We are seeing the interest in Warwickshire. We’ve always had William Shakespeare and the south of the county is a strong tourist destination, while the north has been more about business. What’s the appeal of the region? I think it’s the mix of people and talent. It’s a centrally located space, close to Birmingham, and Heathrow Airport is well connected by road and rail. It’s a nice place, a mixture of city and countryside. There are great venues that are investing in their offer. And also great events like the city of culture and city of sport. Everyone around the world knows Shakespeare, we’ve got heritage in the automotive, high tech businesses. We’ve got both the history and current message and exciting plans for the future. We are looking to make the region more attractive to large international events. I think we have strong venues here, like the Ricoh Arena, Warwick Conferences, NAEC Stoneleigh, and a multitude of smaller venues. They have all done very well by themselves. There is, of course, the NEC and ICC Birmingham. Chris Hartley, who recently joined NAEC Stoneleigh, has encouraged us to look at our area more and to try and retain the shows that one venue can’t host, where we can share the knowledge with other local venues, so we get the event to the area. www.conference-news.co.uk