Clegg unveils £100m Rolls-Royce factory

The facility will make more than 2,500 fan and turbine discs a year (parts of a plane's engine, which will power aircraft made by Airbus, Boeing, and Bombardier). The new factory will also make discs for the world's fastest-selling and most efficient civil aircraft engine – the Trent XWB, which goes into Airbus' A350 XWB. Rolls-Royce said the new facility in Washington, Tyne and Wear would safeguard hundreds of highly-skilled manufacturing jobs in the North East. During the visit, Clegg and Cable announced £45m joint Government and industry funding for three projects led by Rolls-Royce through the Aerospace Technology Institute to develop new technology for low-carbon aircraft engines. Cable said: "The UK is at the forefront of the global aerospace industry, and investments such as this new factory from Rolls-Royce will help to keep us there. The projects that we are funding through our aerospace industrial strategy will ensure that Britain develops the efficient and environmentally friendly aircraft of the future, while keeping highly-skilled manufacturing jobs here in Britain." The funding will be used for research and development to reduce carbon emissions by using lightweight composite materials to make Rolls-Royce engines. Research will also focus on changing parts of the engine design to make engines more efficient and reducing the time it takes to manufacture them. The research will be carried out by a number of partners from across the UK including the University of Birmingham, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Sheffield, the Advanced Forming Research Centre in Glasgow, the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, and the Universities of Nottingham, Oxford and Sheffield.