The Global Race for Tomorrow’s Industry

John McGill, shares an update from the UK’s Innovation Corridor. 15 November 2021.

As the UK’s Innovation Corridor raise a cheer for last month’s news that global tv and film giant Netflix has agreed to lease space from industrial space provider Segro in Enfield, more recent news concerning another of the borough’s FTSE 100 companies, Johnson Matthey, shows that progress can sometimes be a bit more zigzag.

The Netflix deal comes in close behind the announcement in August of a land acquisition by Blackstone and Hudson Pacific to build new film studios in Broxbourne which will generate 4,500 permanent jobs in the sector.

Add to this Troubadour studios investment at Meridian Water, in Enfield, plus recent investments in Hertfordshire as well as the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, then it’s clear that the investment market sees a great future for tv and film in this part of the world.

And let us not forget that this is a truly global business – so many other parts of the world would have been considered.

But in another part of the industrial ecosystem of the Upper Lee Valley the news isn’t quite so positive.

A strategic decision by Johnson Matthey to halt research and production of car batteries is pretty seismic and, although batteries were never going to be manufactured in Enfield – a plant was proposed in Finland – the repercussions will affect the whole company, one which has deep roots in Enfield, Royston and Cambridge too.

Find out more about the Innovation Corridor: innovationcorridor.uk