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Thursday 11 March 2010

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Research and Development

Figure 13 UK aerospace industry research expenditure by source 2007

  • R&D and early stage R&T expenditure remained high at £2.92bn. Self financed R&D accounts for £1.3bn of the investment, with the greatest proportion of research investment in defence.
  • R&D funded by the UK government was £0.6bn, 22 per cent of the total.

 
Source: SBAC

Figure 14 UK aerospace R&D expenditure 2007

  • R&D investment rose to £2.74bn in 2007. Of this amount £1.3bn was invested by companies directly. £0.4bn was invested by other governments and others contributed £0.44bn.

 
Source: SBAC

Figure 15 UK aerospace R&T expenditure 1997 ? 2007

  • R&T expenditure was £224.5m in 2007, almost evenly split between the civil and defence sectors. A 10 per cent increase on the previous year's results.
  • Civil R&T accounted for £112m whilst £113m was spent on defence.

 
Source: SBAC

Figure 16 UK aerospace R&D undertaken in the UK and overseas

  • R&D invested by UK aerospace companies in their operations both within the UK and overseas reached £3.52bn in 2007. Total overseas research spending stayed flat whilst there was an increased level of investment in UK based research.
  • As the historic chart shows the proportion of research investment overseas is variable year on year.

 
Source: SBAC

Figure 17 Government support for research programmes

  • Government support for research in the sector totalled £43.4m in 2007.
  • The R&D process involves a number of public and private agencies, companies, national research organisations, academia, and increasingly, regional government. It also often requires sophisticated, complex and expensive research infrastructure, i.e. advanced aerodynamics may require wind tunnel test facilities and high-performance computing.
  • Government support for aerospace research from all sources including the Regions is brigaded through the Technology Strategy Board.

 
Source: BERR