Lord Bhattacharyya of Moseley has been on speed-dial for prime ministers and captains of industry since Margaret Thatcher first sought his advice on how to reshape British industry with her ambitious privatisation programme.
Bhattacharyya, the 77-year-old regius professor of manufacturing and chairman of Warwick university’s Manufacturing Group (WMG), is also a business adviser and close confidant of Ratan Tata, former chairman and figurehead of Tata Group, the Indian conglomerate that owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Tata Steel and Tetley Tea.
The manufacturing guru helped broker the 2008 deal for Tata to buy JLR from Ford and was closely involved in the 2007 acquisition of Corus to form Tata Steel Europe.
While the car company has roared on to success, the steel business has struggled through headwinds caused by cheap Chinese steel and high energy costs.
A deal to merge the European steel operations of Tata with ThyssenKrupp, a German rival, was announced late last month after Tata removed a significant obstacle by offloading its UK retirement fund in August. The Indian group ditched the £15bn British Steel pension scheme, inherited in the Corus deal, which threatened the survival of its UK business.
Bhattacharyya believes the proposed tie-up will secure a brighter future for the steel business. “It will be better with ThyssenKrupp. Or else it will get isolated,” he says. “In Britain, the energy costs are so high, so the penalty heavy industries have to pay has to be looked at [by government].”
The Remainer believes that erecting barriers to the free movement of skilled workers and imposing charges on goods flowing between Britain and the EU will inevitably have some impact. So, what does Britain need from the Brexit deal for industry to flourish? “Free movement of skilled people and no tariffs,” he says, without hesitation.
The car industry is particularly sensitive to additional costs being slapped on the movement of parts and skilled workers. The carmakers are multinational operators that are used to transferring millions of components each week between their European operations without being hit with additional costs or border delays.
“In my judgment, there will be a soft Brexit for car manufacturers,” Bhattacharyya says. “Because it’s not in [the UK’s EU partners’] interests to crucify us and it’s not in ours to crucify them.
“I’m amused at what’s happening to this country. Most of the rest of the world wants to develop trade relationships [with Europe], and we want to be out of it. We are a small country. The Japanese didn’t come here because we are the bee’s knees. They came here because we are a gateway to Europe.”
Will Tata continue to invest in Britain post-Brexit? “Yes, but they are not going to do it if the business case is not there,” he warns.
As a young graduate, Bhattacharyya arrived in the UK from India in 1961 to start a one-year apprenticeship at Lucas Industries, the now-defunct West Midlands motor and aerospace manufacturer, and later completed a PhD in engineering production.
He set up WMG in 1980 – at Thatcher’s request – with the aim of bridging the gap between academia and industry. He has since transformed it from one man in the university’s engineering department into a business with 625 employees and an annual turnover of £200m.
WMG has more than 3,000 people in education programmes and more than 250 doctoral students. It has carved out a lucrative niche providing research and development for industrial giants such as JLR, Bosch, Airbus, Nissan and BAE Systems. Its boffins develop new battery technology, cyber-security systems, lightweight materials for the auto and aerospace sectors, and surgical procedures for the healthcare industry, among other contracts.
The £200m National Automotive Innovation Centre, funded largely by the car industry, is the latest jewel in WMG’s crown. The striking glass and metal box will open at Warwick university next year and will house some of the finest minds from academia and industry, focused on advances in intelligent vehicles, electrification and lighter-weight materials.
“If I went to the government for funding for it, I would spend my time in committees chasing money,” he says. “Private companies just want output.”
Bhattacharyya was knighted by Tony Blair’s government in 2003 and elevated to the House of Lords in 2004. But he has friends and admirers on both sides of the aisle in Westminster and takes a pragmatic rather than tribal view of politics.
“I’m a cross between intervention and independence,” he says. “I won’t support everything relying on government – you can’t have a long-term strategy based on that. It just won’t work if there’s no market pull.
“When Thatcher came in, the majority of British industry was nationalised. She came up with quite a simple strategy – how can we improve the productivity of these assets so they can be privatised?”
Having been a regular visitor to Japan and Germany, Bhattacharyya was ideally equipped to map out a manufacturing blueprint for the politicians in Britain.
“In the 80s, the Japanese were beating the living daylights out of us,” he recalls. “For example, the Japanese government and car companies got together and said, ‘Let’s see if we can do one side of the car in one stamping.’ They did – this was in the early 1970s. At that time, [British car producers] didn’t know what was going on.”
Britain’s car industry went through some dark times in the 1980s and 1990s, but has come roaring back since – thanks largely to the success of JLR and investment from overseas giants such as Nissan, Toyota, Honda, BMW (Mini) and General Motors.
Bhattacharyya is optimistic that the Midlands can benefit from this resurgence and once again become a powerhouse in automotive manufacturing. Along with the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership, WMG is backing proposals to create a £120m National Battery Prototype Centre.
If successful, the centre would be close to Coventry airport, and help produce electric batteries to take advantage of the forecast boom in demand for zero-emission vehicles.
“It will make a huge difference to the battery industry,” Bhattacharyya adds. “At the moment, it is mainly in the hands of the Koreans. We should make Coventry a smart motor city, like Munich, Stuttgart and Michigan.”
