Doing Business in Stoke-on-Trent

A great place to do business

Stoke-on-Trent, home to over 7000 businesses employing over 106,000 people, is a leading business location in the heart of the UK that reaches out to serve markets nationally and worldwide. We are located midway between Manchester and Birmingham. Our excellent road, rail and air links will give you quick and easy access to the main centres of population in the UK.

We are renowned for our world class products. The city has an enviable reputation for innovation and design backed by an adaptable and multi-skilled workforce, with over 780,000 people within a 20 minute drive time. The city is proud of its association with the leading ceramic producers such as Wedgwood, Spode, Portmeirion and Moorcroft, but the city’s economy is far more diverse. For example Michelin, long associated with Stoke-on-Trent, has located its UK and Ireland Customer Service Centre in the city in a new purpose built complex.

Our changing economy

The city has seen major changes over the past ten years, with recent growth in employment in education, health and social work and financial services,  retail, distribution and transport.

A mixture of existing and new high tech manufacturing industries is complemented by a growing range of new service industries from logistics to financial services. The Caudwell group of companies has its world headquarters in the city and along with the Royal Mail, nPower and others is one of an increasing number of contact centres in the city, which in total employ over 2000 people.

The city has become a nationally recognised logistics location because of our central location, high quality motorway access and recent developments to the A50 link road, M6 Toll Road and junction improvements on the A500.

Recent developments include:

• Sainsburys distribution centre, 500,000 sq ft, Radial Park
• Screwfix Direct, 451,000 sq ft, Trentham Lakes
• Pets at Home, 150,000 sq ft, Trentham Lakes

Other schemes include the 885,000sq ft of distribution space on Prologis Park and the 185,000sq ft high bay warehouse on Radial Park.

Employment is still under represented in the service sectors and financial services in particular. Priority is now being given to attracting inward investment in the areas of medical technologies, professional services, building technologies and high value added consumer goods to grow and diversify the economy. The Birmingham National Health Service Trust have located their payroll operation in the city centre with an estimated employment of 250 persons.

New business sites

We are working in partnership with landowners and government agencies to accommodate new and expanding businesses by providing high quality, strategic employment sites  at Trentham Lakes (162 ha), Etruria Valley (11ha) and Radial Park (25ha) which to date have created nearly 4000 new jobs and over 2 million sq ft of new office, industrial, distribution and leisure floorspace.

To meet the demand for new sites a number of schemes are being promoted including the 40ha extension to Etruria Valley to create a mixed use office and housing development and proposals by Advantage West Midlands, the Regional Development Agency, to develop the 100ha Chatterley Valley site as a key investment site and the 25ha extension to Radial Park. Our development of these sites will complement proposals to promote the City Centre as a business, retail and leisure core serving the North Staffordshire sub region.

Contact Economic Development

Contact our Economic Development team to find out more about doing business in Stoke-on-Trent.