STOKE: MANUFACTURING POWERHOUSE
Built for growth: Stokeon-Trent named UK’ s top emerging manufacturing city
Fast broadband, industrial space and proximity to major manufacturers have placed Stokeon-Trent at the top of a national ranking for manufacturing growth potential. The findings offer fresh recognition of the city’ s strengths- and strengthen calls for investment in the infrastructure, skills and innovation needed to turn that potential into growth.
Stoke-on-Trent has been named the UK’ s top emerging manufacturing city in a new report examining the places with the greatest potential for future growth.
Software company Unleashed placed the city at the top of its national table in the UK Regional Manufacturing Growth Powerhouse Report 2026, ahead of Leeds and Birmingham.
The report assessed the future potential of the five leading manufacturing towns and cities in each English region, using an index created from four publicly available data sources and a weighted formula.
It considered the number of manufacturing units already operating in each location, the size of the manufacturing workforce, available warehousing space and average broadband speeds.
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Broadband was included as a measure of how well places can support advanced manufacturing, including the growing use of artificial intelligence.
Stoke-on-Trent achieved an index score of 64.24 out of 100, presented as 64.2 in the report’ s headline rankings. Leeds followed closely behind on 63.9, while Birmingham placed third with 60.9.
Unleashed said:“ Fast broadband( 164 Mbps), plentiful industrial space, and proximity to major manufacturers like JCB and Michelin make Stoke the UK’ s top emerging manufacturing city. Its connectivity is laying the foundations for AI-enabled advanced manufacturing.”
The report identified 610 manufacturing units operating in Stoke-on-Trent and a manufacturing workforce of 13,000.
The city topped the national table for average broadband download speed at 164 Mbps and ranked fourth for warehousing space, with 11.164m ² per 10,000 residents.
These strengths were sufficient to place Stoke-on-Trent ahead of cities with much larger existing manufacturing bases.
Second-placed Leeds has 1,560 manufacturing units and a workforce of 27,000, while Birmingham has 2,105 units and 28,000 manufacturing workers. Birmingham was described by Unleashed as having the largest manufacturing base of any emerging city included in the ranking.
Hull and Wakefield completed the top five, followed by Bradford, Northampton, Sheffield, Swindon and Leicester. continued on page 52