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Doing business in the motorsport and advanced engineering sectors

It’s focus week again on Bdaily. This week, we are looking at the business of sport. Here, Ian France, show director at Autosport International, assesses the impact of the motorsport industry in the UK.

The UK is the global hub for the motorsport industry in which eight out of the 11 Formula One teams are currently located. Motorsport Valley is a region that stretches through the counties of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Oxfordshire and is the home of McLaren, Red Bull, Lotus and Williams, to name a few.

There are an estimated 3,500 companies and 40,000 employees that make up the UK’s motorsport supply chain and are contributing around £6 billion to the UK economy. Amongst these companies are some of the UK’s foremost innovators, take for example ATL Fuel Cells, the world’s oldest and largest producer of safety fuel cells.

Their development work has led to bladder-type fuel cells, which deform under high-energy impacts and have been used for over 16 years by all the Formula One teams, reducing the regular fires we previously witnessed while watching F1, now a very rare sight.

Another highly successful company is Xtrac, an automotive transmission technology specialist that is often cited as ‘a UK industry benchmark and exemplar for small and medium size companies’, exporting more than 60 per cent of its motorsport products.

Established in 1984 the company’s superior quality high performance transmissions have led to on-going work with leading teams in every discipline of motorsport.

Both ATL Fuel Cells and Xtrac are examples of how the UK’s motorsport and high performance technology expertise can be applied to other sectors, such as aviation, defence and marine.

A key aspect of the success in the industry is the networking and technology transfer between sectors. Businesses that are leading the way in the motorsport industry will gather at Europe’s largest dedicated motorsport trade show, Autosport International on 9-12 January 2014.

The annual pre-season event was earlier this year visited by 28,000 motorsport professionals and more than 600 leading manufacturers and suppliers covering all areas of motorsport. The show provides these companies with a platform to raise awareness of their products as well as share knowledge on the latest industry developments.

We look forward to hearing more about the innovative UK businesses leading the growth in the motorsport and advanced engineering industries at Autosport International in January.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Autosport International .