Pioneering production: Inside AMRC Factory 2050

The AMRC Factory 2050 facility is helping to put the UK at the forefront of manufacturing technology research and development

On the eastern edge of Sheffield, where the city merges into its neighbour Rotherham, a spectacular looking circular building with an almost entirely glazed exterior is the latest addition to one of the UK’s leading sites for research and development of manufacturing technologies. The structure is the Factory 2050 facility, which started up late in 2015 as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) – a joint initiative of the University of Sheffield and US aerospace giant Boeing – that has operated over the wider immediate area since just after the turn of the millennium.

According to Stuart Dawson, chief technology officer for the AMRC, some 500 people are now employed across the site, generating an annual turnover of around £32m. Activities range across several different application areas, including nuclear, castings and composites, but in all cases the basic methodology is that of cooperative technology development projects between the AMRC’s own personnel and industrial partners. In the case of the new Factory 2050 building, the emphasis, as the name indicates, is to explore the technologies that could form the basis of manufacturing over the coming decades. Four in particular, says Dawson, form the current focus of work there: