Our CEO and Chairman, Mark Ridgway OBE, DL, presented at the launch of the Wakefield Economic Growth Plan earlier this week at the WX Wakefield. 

This event outlined Wakefield District's Economic Growth Plan. It highlights priorities for supporting growth, investment, and opportunity, with a focus on three key sectors – logistics, creative and digital, and advanced manufacturing – that will drive the area's future success and vision. 

Mark gave the audience insight into Group Rhodes' long and illustrious history in advanced manufacturing and engineering, and into why the Wakefield community has been so important to the business as it has evolved over the past 200 years. 

Mark went on to discuss the importance of the Wakefield Economic Growth Plan, which clearly identifies advanced manufacturing as one of the three key sectors for our local economy, employing almost one in eight people and supporting thousands more through supply chains and local businesses. 

Mark’s presentation highlighted that advanced manufacturing is not simply about bigger machines or more automation. It is about using technology, innovation, digitalisation and world-class skills to produce better products, work more efficiently and compete in global markets. 

Young people need to see engineering not as an old industry, but as an exciting career with purpose and progression. Today's engineering is about robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and cleaner, more sustainable production. It is about solving problems, improving lives and building the industries of the future. 

Mark displayed a medal won at the Wakefield Industrial Exhibition in 1856, evidence, if needed, that manufacturing has shaped Wakefield for generations. It built the city's communities, created skilled jobs and established a reputation for making things that the rest of the country, and indeed the world, values. 

His presentation finished by highlighting that the future of Wakefield will be built by people who innovate, collaborate, and invest in one another. Wakefield can be optimistic about the future, as the area already possesses many of the ingredients needed for success.