Thames Freeport - Britain's Trading Future

[ 82 ] Thames Freeport’s location along the A13 corridor in south Essex is on the doorstep of Leonardo’s site in Basildon and so the company shares Thames Freeport’s ambition to bring investment, opportunity and prosperity to the communities that live and work locally. At a time when the levelling-up agenda has such prominence, it is important to remember that the need for regeneration exists in all corners of the UK, Essex included. Leonardo’s Essex heritage can be traced back to 1898 when Guglielmo Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company opened the world’s first radio factory in Chelmsford. Almost 125 years later that spirit of innovation is as strong as ever. Today, the Basildon site is home to around 650 employees. It is a highly skilled workforce, and the bedrock of the business is continuous investment in groundbreaking technologies in the aerospace, defence and security sector. This is a field in which the UK is acknowledged to have world- leading capability and, as a major employer, Leonardo recognises its role in sustaining and growing that capability. The technologies and solutions developed at the Basildon site are applied across many different spheres. For example, the company’s expertise supports the UK’s next generation combat aircraft system, Tempest, which is set to join the RAF fleet from 2035 as a replacement for Typhoon. Leonardo’s experience in electro-optics provides the UK with operational independence with capabilities exploiting high- performance infrared detection. The many ways in which capabilities such as this are deployed across the air, land, sea and space domains show how innovation in local industry can play a role in the UK’s Multi Domain Integration programme. With many decades of thermal imaging camera expertise for both land and naval missions, Leonardo’s, cameras are central to the electro- optic systems of the Royal Navy. The company is also a world-leading provider of electro-optic seekers to missile customers around the world. And as the development of unmanned air systems (UAS) continues at a rapid pace, Leonardo’s expertise in mission systems is helping to counter the threat to national security that hostile UAS pose. This appears frequently in the press as ‘counter drone’. While Leonardo’s camera technology is primarily aimed at the aerospace and defence markets, it has also been applied in other disciplines, notably in the innovative ‘Hotspot’ technology used in cricket, as well as L E O N A R D O As the UK continues its economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, it’s clear that long- term growth will need to be powered by investment in jobs, skills, advanced manufacturing and the technologies of tomorrow. Against this backdrop, the creation of Thames Freeport is a positive and potentially transformative development that resonates with Leonardo. At a time when the levelling-up agenda has such prominence, it is important to remember that the need for regeneration exists in all corners of the UK, Essex included Miysis DIRCM (Directed Infrared Countermeasure)