Centre stage

摘要

The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) is housed in one of the many smartly modern buildings on Warwick University's campus, next to (but not physically or organisationally attached to) the bulky grey oblong of Warwick Manufacturing Group, and a small vegetation-packed pond patrolled by ill-tempered geese. Within, the bulk of the ground floor is taken up by a showcase centre, opened two months ago, which sets out on movable fabric panels the goals and procedures of the APC, punctuated by exhibition-style stands housing examples of technologies the centre has helped develop. Tony Pixton, who has led the opening and establishment of the APC over the past 18 months and will shortly step down as chief executive while remaining on the board, is a hugely experienced figure at the high levels of the automotive sector and a knowledgable engineer in his own right. The roots of the centre, he explained, showing me around the exhibition space, go back to the efforts of the Labour government, headed by then-business secretary Peter Mandelson, to bolster the automotive sector, which then had several large companies with facilities here but a hollowed-out supply chain, a legacy of industrial decline in the 1970s and 1980s. The idea, said Pixton, was to develop technology areas where the UK had a lot of potential, both in terms of expertise and in market growth, and use that to help businesses become more established and also attract the large multinational players to choose the UK as the location for their R&D and technology development.