ISCF Foundation Industries - baseline insights

基础工业（纸浆和造纸、散装化学品、玻璃、陶瓷、水泥和金属）被视为整个英国工业重要供应链的基础。由于对全球价值链的潜在破坏以及对其他生产部门生产的影响，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，基础产业面临着一系列与政策决定相关的挑战，这些政策决定影响了英国的成本基础、国际商品价格的变动以及公司层面的投资优先级决策。最近，多个基础行业达成行业协议的努力，证实了提高这些行业企业生产率和竞争力的意愿和需求。据认为，这将加强国内供应链，并有助于提高整个英国工业的总生产率水平。本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，以确定英国部门在规模、经济贡献、所有权、投资和创新绩效以及最近的生产力水平和绩效方面的比较情况。它将评估该行业英国公司的相对优势和劣势。对学术文献和灰色文献的回顾将探讨全球基础行业新产品、流程和服务创新的发展，以及这些创新的发展程度，以及对于国际创新，这些创新是否被英国公司采用。此外，与企业（包括中小企业和大企业）、其代表组织（如果合适）和研究机构的直接接触，将有助于更深入地了解企业层面的创新和技术投资驱动因素和障碍，企业在实施或将其推向市场时面临的挑战，并确定哪些障碍和障碍是企业成功的最大挑战。本研究的主要目的是为工业战略挑战基金下一波部署的未来决策提供信息。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有能力帮助解决挑战、创新和投资重点，这将支持整个行业更大的活力和生产力。项目成果将为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.