If you run a ceramics or advanced materials business in Stoke-on-Trent, the single most important question on your desk right now is not about growth. It is about whether your cost base will survive the next three years. Energy bills have been compressing margins for years. The UK Emissions Trading Scheme is a live, recurring cost. And in May 2026, the government confirmed a £120 million Ceramics Industry Support Scheme, with £60 million earmarked specifically for capital investment in electrification and decarbonisation. If you haven’t looked into this yet, you’re leaving real money on the table at a moment when margins have no room to absorb that kind of mistake.
But the ceramics scheme is only one part of the picture. Below, I’ll walk through the economic data, the energy and grant context, what the sector looks like beyond ceramics, and where the skills and infrastructure story is heading for North Staffordshire manufacturers.
North Staffordshire Manufacturing in 2026: The Numbers Behind the Potteries Economy
Output growth and insolvency context
The headline from the April 2026 Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Economic Bulletin (Issue 68) is that UK production output grew by 1.2% in the baseline period. That sounds positive. But read alongside the insolvency data, it is a fragile number. There were 2,138 company insolvencies recorded across England and Wales in March 2026 alone, which is 3% higher than the previous year.
A growing output figure combined with rising insolvencies tells you something important: the businesses still operating are producing more, but the margins holding them together are not becoming more comfortable. My read of those two numbers together is that the pool of surviving businesses is doing the heavy lifting, while a growing number of firms quietly exit. That is an inference from the data, not something the Bulletin states directly, but it is the most plausible interpretation of the two figures sitting side by side.
For North Staffordshire manufacturers specifically, this means the operating environment rewards businesses that have invested in efficiency and cost control, and punishes those that haven’t. That is not a soft observation. It is what the numbers suggest.
The local jobs market squeeze
According to the live Staffordshire Economic Bulletin hub, job vacancies across Staffordshire fell 4% year-on-year to April 2026, dropping to 11,700 openings. Stoke-on-Trent vacancies fell 1% to 4,500. Both figures sit below the number of work-related benefit claimants in the area.
This is the dual pressure manufacturers are feeling on the ground right now. Vacancies are falling, which you might read as reduced demand for workers. But the actual problem is that economic inactivity and skill mismatches mean the people who are available often don’t match what manufacturers need. You’re not competing for the wrong candidates. You’re looking at a labour market where the right candidates haven’t entered it yet.
Energy Costs, the UK ETS, and the £120 Million Ceramics Support Scheme
What the Ceramics Industry Support Scheme covers
The May 2026 written ministerial statement (HCWS61) confirmed the Ceramics Industry Support Scheme, with the Stoke-on-Trent Potteries area explicitly cited. The scheme breaks down as follows:
- £60 million allocated for capital investment to help ceramics firms electrify manufacturing processes and reduce reliance on volatile fossil fuels.
- £60 million for broader transition support across the ceramics sector.
For a small or medium ceramics manufacturer, the capital grant element is the most immediately actionable. If you’re running gas-fired kilns and the UK ETS cost is compressing your margin every quarter, this scheme is directly relevant to you.
Before I’d encourage any manufacturer to move on the grant application, I’d want them to know one number first: what is your ETS exposure costing you per quarter, right now, on current gas consumption? That figure changes everything about how urgently you pursue the electrification pathway and how you build the business case for the capital grant. If you don’t know that number, find it before you do anything else. The grant doesn’t make the decision for you, but it does change the maths significantly once you know what delay is actually costing you.
How the extended Business Rates discount helps you operate
The Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone Business Rates Discount Scheme has been extended to March 2031, covering all Stoke-on-Trent CVEZ sites. It applies to manufacturers, professional services, and creative industries. This extension is confirmed in the May 2026 written ministerial statement alongside the ceramics funding package.
This benefit is almost completely absent from business-facing content online, which is frustrating given how tangible it is. If you’re a manufacturer considering whether to locate or expand in Stoke, business rates relief running to 2031 is not a footnote. It is a real recurring cost reduction that should sit inside any investment appraisal from year one.
Moving beyond energy cost crisis management
JCB’s investment at its Rocester headquarters is a useful reference point, though not a direct template. The February 2026 Economic Bulletin (Issue 66) confirms JCB is installing a fully automated powder paint plant costing £60 million at Rocester, alongside new machining centres and friction welders, as part of a wider £100 million investment programme.
JCB is not a ceramics firm, and it is not operating on a ceramics grant. The relevant lesson is narrower than ‘do what JCB did.’ What a 12-person ceramics manufacturer can actually take from the JCB decision is this: the firms committing capital to electrification and process automation right now are doing it because they have modelled the cost of not doing it. For JCB, that’s a £100 million programme. For a smaller Potteries manufacturer, the equivalent might be replacing two gas kilns with electric equivalents and recovering the upfront cost through ETS savings over four years. The scale is different. The logic is the same: model the cost of delay, then decide.
Beyond Ceramics: Metals, Automotive Supply Chains, and Advanced Materials
Why subsector differentiation matters
The most operationally damaging thing policy documents do to North Staffordshire manufacturing is treat it as one sector. Consider what it means in practice for a defence-facing advanced ceramics business to be grouped with a heritage tableware producer in a skills or capital programme. The tableware firm is competing on unit cost and fighting energy margin compression directly. The defence-supply firm has pricing power built into long-term contracts, a different skills profile, and a customer base that does not switch suppliers on price. Treating them identically in a workforce development programme means the training provision gets designed for the wrong business.
The manufacturing base here spans heritage ceramics, advanced ceramics for aerospace and healthcare, metals, automotive supply chains, and food and drink. The policy levers, cost structures, and growth trajectories are fundamentally different across those subsectors. Understanding which one you’re actually in determines which support mechanisms are relevant to you.
The advanced materials opportunity versus heritage ceramics margins
Heritage ceramics producers, particularly those making tableware and sanitaryware, face commodity margin pressure and direct energy-cost exposure. They are export-facing, often serving price-sensitive retail and hospitality markets, and they sit directly in the firing line of UK ETS costs on gas-intensive kiln operations.
Advanced ceramics manufacturers, by contrast, supply into aerospace, defence, and healthcare supply chains where the value proposition is technical performance rather than unit cost. These businesses are not immune to energy costs, but they operate with more pricing power and their customers are less likely to switch on price alone.
If you’re an advanced ceramics business in North Staffordshire and policy documents are treating you as equivalent to a heritage tableware producer, push back. The July 2026 LSIP names advanced manufacturing as a priority sector, but it does not disaggregate subsector-level workforce or capital requirements in a way that helps an advanced ceramics business plan its hiring pipeline differently from a pottery manufacturer. That is a gap worth raising directly with Staffordshire Chambers.
Supply-chain dependencies you need to map
Staffordshire manufacturers sitting within automotive and aerospace supply chains face a specific risk that does not get enough attention: concentration risk. If you supply components to OEMs based in the North West or the Midlands and those OEMs restructure, your order book is exposed in a way that is very difficult to insure against.
North Staffordshire sits in an awkward geographic position for formal funding purposes, sitting between the Midlands Engine and the Northern Powerhouse but formally part of neither. This is not a theoretical problem. Supply-chain resilience funds administered through Midlands Engine or Northern Powerhouse frameworks tend to prioritise businesses with stronger geographic ties to those regions. Manufacturers here do not always qualify on the same terms, and the gap is worth understanding before you build your funding plan around a programme that may not reach you. If you’re embedded in an automotive or aerospace supply chain, map your OEM exposure now. Know what your order book looks like if your top two customers change their sourcing model. That exercise takes an afternoon and it may be the most useful thing you do this quarter.
Skills, Recruitment, and the LSIP Roadmap: What Manufacturers Need to Know
The 60,000 higher-level jobs forecast by 2035
The July 2026 Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP), published by Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce and backed by Skills England, makes the structural challenge explicit. The area will need around 60,000 additional higher-level jobs by 2035 as lower-skilled roles decline. Advanced manufacturing is one of eight priority sectors named in the plan.
That forecast deserves to sit at the centre of every manufacturer’s medium-term planning. You cannot hire people who don’t exist in the labour market. And right now, the training pipeline is not calibrated to match the demand that’s coming.
Linking local colleges and universities to your hiring pipeline
Stoke-on-Trent College and Keele University are primary delivery partners in the LSIP ecosystem. Keele, based in Newcastle-under-Lyme, has genuine research capability in materials science and engineering that sits directly adjacent to what advanced ceramics and materials manufacturers need. I studied at Keele. The institution is chronically underused by local SME manufacturers who don’t think of a university as a practical business resource. That is a mistake.
Specifically: Keele has an active Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme. A KTP places a recently qualified graduate into your business, co-supervised by an academic, to deliver a defined R&D or process improvement project. The cost to an SME is substantially subsidised by Innovate UK. For a North Staffordshire advanced ceramics or materials firm, a KTP with Keele’s materials science team could deliver the kind of technical development work that would otherwise require a full-time senior hire. Most manufacturers I speak to locally have never considered it.
The alignment between apprenticeship programmes, T-Levels, and broader provision remains fragmented at SME level. If you’re trying to build a hiring pipeline rather than just fill a vacancy, you almost certainly need to build direct relationships with these institutions rather than waiting for the provision to find you.
Investment Zones, Business Rates Relief, and Where to Find Support
Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone: 10 years, 2,400 jobs, and what comes next
The Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone has delivered almost 2,400 jobs across 140 hectares in its first 10 years. Those are real numbers on real brownfield land in Stoke-on-Trent. They matter as a baseline for understanding what the zone has actually delivered versus what investment zone announcements typically promise.
The Business Rates Discount extension to March 2031, confirmed via the May 2026 written ministerial statement, is the most operationally significant update for manufacturers considering the CVEZ right now. It covers all Stoke-based CVEZ sites for manufacturers, professional services, and creative industries. If you’re doing an investment appraisal on whether to locate or expand in the zone, build this into your numbers from year one. It is a recurring cost reduction, not a one-off incentive.
The full support stack available right now
Taken together, the support infrastructure for North Staffordshire manufacturers in mid-2026 looks like this:
- £120 million Ceramics Industry Support Scheme (May 2026): capital grants for electrification and transition support, Potteries area explicitly named.
- CVEZ Business Rates Discount extended to 2031: recurring cost reduction for qualifying Stoke-on-Trent sites, confirmed in the May 2026 ministerial statement.
- July 2026 LSIP: 60,000 higher-level jobs needed by 2035, advanced manufacturing a named priority, Staffordshire Chambers leading delivery.
- Keele University KTP programme: subsidised R&D and process improvement placements for SMEs, directly relevant to advanced ceramics and materials firms.
None of these individually solves the structural challenges facing the sector. But used together, as part of a coherent capital and operational plan, they represent a real financial and capability stack that most manufacturers in the area are not fully using.
If you haven’t already: pull up the HCWS61 ministerial statement this week, confirm whether your site qualifies for the CVEZ rates extension, and check whether your kiln configuration makes you eligible for the capital electrification grant. Those three steps take less than a day and they tell you whether the ceramics scheme is worth pursuing properly. That is the first move. Do it before the application window fills up.
Once the capital investment and grant questions are resolved, the next pressure most Staffordshire manufacturing SMEs run into is the operational drag of back-office work that does not scale. Compliance documentation, production scheduling admin, procurement tracking, supplier communications, and reporting cycles all consume time that is genuinely scarce in a lean manufacturing business. A lot of that work can now be handled by AI systems built and trained on your own processes and data, running consistently without headcount. That is what I do at Wright Advisory: I find the specific admin and operational bottlenecks in a business, then build and deploy AI agent systems that take them on, so your people are doing the work that actually requires human judgement. If you’re a Staffordshire manufacturer and that sounds relevant to where you are right now, book a free discovery call and we’ll look at your specific situation.
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