ISCF Foundation Industries - baseline insights

基础行业(纸浆和造纸、散装化学品、玻璃、陶瓷、水泥和金属)被视为英国整个行业至关重要的供应链的基础。由于可能扰乱全球价值链，并对其他生产部门的生产产生影响，确保英国在这些行业拥有足够的国内产能的兴趣有所增加。然而，基础行业面临着一系列挑战，涉及影响英国成本基础的政策决定、国际大宗商品价格的变动以及公司层面关于投资优先事项的决定。最近在许多基础行业达成行业协议的努力证实了提高这些行业公司生产率和竞争力的意愿和要求。据认为，这将加强国内供应链，并有助于提高整个英国行业的总体生产率水平。这项研究将全面了解六大基础产业的创新准备情况及其在过去十年中的演变。这将包括与经合组织中适当的竞争对手进行比较分析，以确定英国行业在规模、经济贡献、所有权、投资和创新表现以及最近的生产率水平和表现方面的比较情况。它将评估总部位于英国的公司在该领域的相对优势和劣势。对学术和灰色文献的回顾将探索全球基础行业在新产品、工艺和服务创新方面的发展，以及这些正在发展的程度，对于国际创新，这些创新是否正在被英国公司采用。此外，直接与企业-包括中小企业和大公司-、其代表组织(如果合适)和研究机构接触，将有助于更深入地了解企业层面创新和技术投资的驱动因素和障碍，企业在实施它们或将其推向市场时面临的挑战，并确定哪些障碍和障碍对企业成功构成最大挑战。这项研究的主要目的是为未来关于部署工业战略挑战基金下一波浪潮的决定提供信息。政策制定者已经确定了英国经济面临的一些重大挑战，我们的研究将有助于了解英国基础产业在多大程度上能够为应对挑战做出贡献，以及支持整个行业更具活力和更高生产率的创新和投资优先事项。项目成果将为支持这些未来的公共支出决策提供证据基础。

Foundation industries (pulp and paper, bulk chemicals, glass, ceramics, cement and metals) are seen as underpinning vital supply chains across UK industry. Interest in ensuring that the UK has sufficient domestic capacity in these sectors has increased due to the potential for disruption to global value chains and the consequences for production across other production sectors. The foundation industries have, however, been faced with a range of challenges related to policy decisions which have impacted on the UK cost base, movements in international commodity prices and firm-level decisions on investment priorities. Recent efforts to agree sector deals across a number of foundation industry sectors confirms the appetite and requirement to boost the productivity and competitiveness of companies in these industries. It is thought that this will strengthen domestic supply chains and contribute to raising aggregate productivity levels across wider UK industry. This research will provide a comprehensive understanding of the innovation readiness of the six foundation industries and their evolution over the past decade. This will include a comparative analysis with appropriate competitors in the OECD to determine how the UK sector compares in terms of size, economic contribution, ownership, investment and innovation performance and recent productivity levels and performance. It will assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of UK-based companies in this sector.A review of academic and grey literature will explore developments in new product, process and service innovations across foundation industries globally and the extent to which these are being developed and, for international innovation, whether these are being adopted by UK firms. Additionally, engagement directly with businesses - both SMEs and large companies - , their representative organisations (if appropriate) and research institutions will build greater insights into firm-level drivers of and barriers to innovation and technology investment, the challenges facing businesses in implementing them or bringing them to market and establish which hurdles and barriers present the greatest challenges to business success. This research is primarily intended to inform future decisions on the deployment of the next waves of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Policy makers have identified a number of grand challenges facing the UK economy and our research will help inform the extent to which UK-based foundation industries are equipped to contribute to help address the challenges and the innovation and investment priorities which will support greater dynamism and productivity in the sector as a whole. Project outcomes will provide the evidence base in support of these future decisions on public spending.