INFINITY vision set out in BusinessDesk interview
Professor Gary Jones has set out INFINITY’s vision to transform Derby’s industrial future during a detailed interview with The Business Desk.
His conversation with Business Desk Editor Sam Metcalfe explores how INFINITY can support UK sovereignty around advanced manufacturing investment and innovation.
The company is working to create a full-scale environment for the research and development of complex components for fission, fusion and aerospace.
And Prof. Jones also described the social value of the 200-acre site – which sits within the East Midlands Investment Zone footprint.
“There’s a housing estate planned for either side” he said. “That’s where you get the indirect benefit and jobs, because it means coffee shops, petrol stations, amenities associated with housing – and of course the people in the houses themselves.
“Hopefully, a significant number of those people will be working on the tech park situated in the centre.”
INFINITY will help industry take technologies beyond the laboratory research to prove them at scale and build the capacity needed for long-term national programmes.
The opportunity for the UK is significant, requiring as it does sovereign manufacturing capability to support energy transition, reinforce its advanced engineering base and develop stronger supply chains.
During the interview, Prof. Jones outlined INFINITY’s blended approach to funding as well as reflecting on the announcement of UK Fusion Energy Ltd as its first strategic partner.
The collaboration will align INFINITY’s planned advanced manufacturing capability in Derby directly with STEP Fusion, the UK’s programme to develop a prototype fusion power plant at nearby West Burton in Nottinghamshire.
It forms part of wider strategic planning by the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) under its Trent Arc transformation opportunity.
INFINITY is based alongside one of the 6 priority housing areas identified by EMCAA and will help to unlock development for the site – including a novel way to power neighbouring homes.
“The technologies we have planned produce a lot of heat,” he says.
“We’d like to use the heat to heat the homes. I want a park that works from many different angles, inside out.”
INFINITY offers the opportunity to develop the advanced manufacturing capability needed to produce, inspect and validate large, complex, high-integrity components for national programmes.
It brings together industry, universities and public-sector partners around a shared goal to create high-value jobs – while developing specialist skills and building the technologies Britain needs to develop.
• Read the interview in full on BusinessDesk
