Challenges and opportunities for UK industry

2025 will bring challenges and opportunities for UK industry, according to Katherine Bennett, CEO of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, in her introduction to the 2025 Annual Report.

Released at the beginning of the new financial year, it highlights the impact HVM Catapult centres have in industry and sets out how it will work alongside partners in industry, government and academia to tackle strategic priorities for UK manufacturing.

Katherine Bennett CBE, HVM Catapult CEO, said:

The expert engineers, industry specialists and top-class technicians in our network are committed to solving manufacturers’ toughest challenges. From a space transport operation on the Shetland Islands, to a fibre cement manufacturer in Cornwall, and everywhere in between, our teams worked with over 6,000 companies in 2024, giving them access to world-class facilities and expertise to make step changes in their products, tools and services.

In this report we see the impact of some of those projects: increasing capacity for a family run sweet manufacturer, helping a MedTech company grow and working with an aerospace prime to optimise its aerodynamics.

The report also highlights some of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult’s major programmes, including Hydrogen Innovation Initiative (HII) and Carbon Accounting programme, as well as introducing technology capability roadmaps.

Read and download the report here.