Liverpool City Region approves £400,791 to continue Made Smarter support for manufacturers

On 6 November 2026, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority approved £400,791 to continue Made Smarter support for local manufacturers in 2026/27. Eligible firms can apply for up to £20,000 towards hardware or software and get specialist advice on where to invest. Council decision · GOV.UK grant guidance

The money goes to Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which already manages the North West programme. This year the government paid Liverpool City Region its share directly, so the authority had to approve the transfer.

It covers programme delivery across Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral. The council hasn’t specified how much will reach firms as grants. Officer report, section 4

The transfer is due to take effect on 14 November if nobody calls it in for scrutiny by 13 November. In the meantime, manufacturers can already speak to a Made Smarter adviser. Made Smarter North West

In this guide Eligibility and grants · Local projects · Results so far · Project payback · How to apply · Funding timetable and council records

On this page

Who can apply for Made Smarter support, and how much is available?

You can approach Made Smarter if you run a small workshop. The government listing covers North West manufacturers that have started trading, including those with fewer than ten employees and those with 10 to 249. The first conversation is with an adviser. A fully funded assessment can help you decide where to invest, even if you haven’t chosen a supplier or settled on a piece of equipment.

Headcount is only one part of the check. Made Smarter North West lists manufacturing and engineering firms with up to 249 employees and either turnover below £36 million or a balance sheet total below £18 million. If turnover is above the threshold, check the balance sheet figure before ruling your business out. North West eligibility criteria

Depending on what the assessment identifies, support can include specialist advice, help for the people leading the change, and a contribution towards eligible hardware or software. GOV.UK eligibility and support · Regional assessment process

The published North West grant rate is 50% of eligible costs, up to £20,000. Here’s what that means for three different quotations, assuming the adviser confirms every item qualifies and the full rate is awarded. GOV.UK grant terms

It’s easy to look at a £40,000 quotation, see a potential £20,000 grant and put £20,000 in the budget. Then someone has to buy the fixtures, free up an operator for training and cover the shift while the machine is installed. A software licence might also introduce a bill that comes round every year.

I’d ask the adviser for three things in writing before placing an order. Which items will they fund? When can you commit to the supplier? When will the grant actually reach your bank account? Your share of the cost and the cash you need on the day can be quite different figures.

Who will do the work? Funding for a digital intern

Finding somebody with time to implement a project can be harder than choosing the software. Made Smarter North West offers up to 300 hours at £13.45 an hour towards employing a student or recent graduate, up to £4,035. Your business employs the intern, runs payroll and receives the funding in arrears after each payroll period. Those payment terms apply to the internship. Check the payment schedule for any equipment grant separately. Made Smarter internship terms

Five Made Smarter projects in Liverpool City Region

Two earlier projects show how differently firms have used the programme. In Huyton, JFM Workwear put £27,000 into a customer portal and the way it handles orders. Over in Liverpool, kitchen maker H Miller Bros bought a CNC router and software to take a design through to cutting. Both had help from Made Smarter.

I like those two examples because they raise a question worth asking before you buy a machine. When a customer rings to chase an order, where is the job? It might be waiting for time on the shop floor. It might still be in the office because nobody has signed off the drawing. Liverpool kitchen project · Huyton workwear project

H Miller Bros, Liverpool | From the kitchen drawing to the cutting table

The hardwood kitchen maker secured £19,000 towards a £39,000 project combining a nesting CNC router with design software. Director Howard Miller said the team had at least halved the time it took to complete a project, with the same people. He gave credit to changes in sales, administration, product design and working practices alongside the equipment.

That detail matters in a joinery business. Measuring the minutes spent cutting one panel tells you what the router can do. Measuring the days from the customer approving a drawing to the full kitchen being ready for assembly tells you what delivery date you can promise. Growth Platform, 29 July 2025

JFM Workwear, Huyton | Making repeat orders easier to process

JFM secured £11,000 towards a £27,000 investment in a customer portal and the way orders move through the business. The company forecast three new jobs and training for eight existing roles. The June announcement recorded those as forecasts.

Anyone who handles repeat orders will recognise the opportunity here. The buyer knows which uniform they want, but someone may still have to confirm the sizes, the logo or which version the customer approved last time. If you’re considering a portal, pull your last 30 repeat orders. How many could go straight through to production? For the ones that got stuck, would the portal have collected the missing detail? Growth Platform, 19 June 2026

Ess Pee Fabrications, Liverpool | Replacing a mill and learning from the first installation

Ess Pee invested in a Haas CNC Mini Mill as the first stage of a five-year machining upgrade. The mill introduced automated probing and access to real-time machine data. For suppliers following the investment, the first machine is a confirmed purchase. The case study describes later purchases as part of the company’s plan.

Ess Pee’s figures give another machine shop something to compare. Its £20,000 grant helped replace a 24-year-old mill. With automated probing, a setup that used to take around 30 minutes took about five. For a short batch, those 25 minutes come off the job before the first part is cut. Ess Pee also reported that margins on repeat jobs had risen by around 8%. That figure applies to repeat work and comes from the company’s account. Made Smarter case study, 2 January 2026

Asset Lifecycle Solutions, Runcorn | Keeping track of work across the business

The IT asset disposal and lifecycle specialist invested £35,000 in an enterprise resource planning system. Director Paul Callaghan highlighted the ability to see what was happening across the business. Growth Platform reported a £20,000 grant.

If you’ve been doing the sums, you’ll have spotted that £20,000 is more than half of £35,000. The published account gives no breakdown that reconciles the two figures with today’s 50% rate.

For anyone preparing a similar proposal, the figure to budget against is the one the programme confirms for your own eligible costs. Growth Platform, 19 June 2026 · Current government guidance

Organica UK, Birkenhead | Finding lost time on a filling line

When demand for its cleaning products rose, Organica needed to know how much more it could get out of the lines it already had. Sensors on two blending tanks and three filling lines recorded what went into the tanks and how many bottles made it through filling, capping and labelling. A Made Smarter digital intern helped put the system in place.

Operators could see a stoppage and its cause while the line was down. In a case study published in July 2021, Organica reported a 20% increase in productivity. Its figures for future energy and waste savings were still forecasts. For a director weighing up another filling line, that’s a question worth taking back to the factory. How much output could the existing line recover if the team could see where it kept stopping? Organica UK case study, 29 July 2021

What the evidence says about investment, jobs and productivity

Two numbers from July 2025 are easy to mix up. Made Smarter had reached its 400th technology project across the North West. Within that total, 68 projects were in Liverpool City Region. Growth Platform reported £1.4 million in local matched funding and £4.5 million in total project investment.

That works out at roughly £3.20 of local project spending for each £1 of grant. The £3.20 includes the original pound. It’s a useful measure of how much investment the businesses and programme financed together. Working out what those businesses earned back would require their results after installation. Growth Platform’s local and regional breakdown

By September 2026 the North West programme had supported 451 technology projects, up 51, or about 13%, on the July 2025 milestone. It had also helped draw up 705 digital roadmaps.

Those roadmaps record businesses working out what to do next. Some of those same businesses may also appear in the project total, so adding the two figures would overstate what we know. July 2025 milestone · September 2026 programme update

There’s a more searching piece of research behind the local announcements. Ipsos UK and George Barrett evaluated Made Smarter across five English regions. Their report, dated June 2025 and published by government in July 2026, found that 78% of participating firms surveyed said they had adopted industrial digital technology after taking part. Businesses described better planning, lower costs and improvements for customers.

Could the researchers see those changes in company performance? Their stronger analysis of recent participants found no statistically significant effect on turnover, employment or productivity over the period studied.

That leaves open a question for each owner: where, and how soon, do you expect the improvement to show up in your own figures? Independent evaluation, executive summary, pp. 7–8 · Publication record

Take an estimator who gets half a day a week back. If there’s a queue of profitable enquiries on their desk, that time could help the business quote sooner and win work. If the order book is already full and inspection is running a week behind, winning more of the same jobs could make delivery worse. I’d want sales and production in the room together before putting extra turnover in the business case.

How to work out whether a digital project pays back

Suppose a subcontract manufacturer spends £32,000 on job-tracking software and hardware. A £16,000 grant leaves £16,000 to find. Add £4,000 for implementation outside the grant, and the business has £20,000 of its own money to recover.

The production manager expects better scheduling to cut paid overtime by £1,200 a month. The software costs £200 a month to run. At £1,000 a month in net savings, the investment pays back in 20 months. But what if overtime only falls by £700? After the licence fee, the business saves £500 a month. The same investment now takes 40 months to pay back.

These are illustrative figures. Both calculations leave out tax, financing and additional sales.

Before debating which estimate is right, I’d go back through three months of overtime sheets. How many late shifts were down to scheduling? How many started with a late drawing, a breakdown or a queue at inspection? If most of the overtime came from jobs waiting for a drawing, a screen on the shop floor might tell you they’re late a little earlier. You’d still need someone to fix the handover.

Other projects call for different checks. These are the records I’d take to a first meeting.

Use the same customer, part family or type of job when you compare results. A busy month of repeat work can make the new system look brilliant. A month of one-offs can make the same investment look poor. If a handful of customers account for most of the extra handling, it’s worth checking what those accounts cost to serve. We’ve looked at that separately in our guide to customer profitability in manufacturing.

How to apply for Made Smarter support in the North West

Start on the Made Smarter North West programme page and select “Start your journey”. Tell the adviser what you make, where you make it and what you’re trying to improve. They can assess your business and help draw up a plan.

For the first meeting, I’d take one recent job that should have made money and didn’t. Bring the quote, the job card, the actual hours and the person who had to sort it out. They’ll usually remember the bit the paperwork misses. Perhaps the customer changed the drawing after setup. Perhaps two people spent a morning looking for material the system said was in stock.

Once you agree what needs to change, ask the adviser to confirm eligible costs, quotation requirements, order and claim dates, and how payment works. Give somebody in the business responsibility for recording the starting figure. When the first month of comparable work is complete, you’ll have something to check the investment against.

If you can show an adviser where a job lost half a shift last week, you’ve already given them something worth working on. Register your interest with Made Smarter

Funding timetable and council records

The Growth Company delivers Made Smarter across the six boroughs, with the Liverpool City Region Growth Hub coordinating the work locally. The council’s published records trace this year’s allocation from the original proposal through to the November vote. Council officer report, section 4

Council records — September programme notice · October investment notice · November decision.

One date matters if you are putting together a capital budget. 31 March 2027 is the end of the financial year this decision covers. The government’s settlement lists the 2027/28 and 2028/29 Made Smarter figures as still to follow. If you want to trial a system on one line and roll it out next year, cost the second phase separately until you know what support will be available. Government settlement, Made Smarter line and footnote 3

On 6 November 2026, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority approved £400,791 to continue Made Smarter support for local manufacturers in 2026/27. Eligible firms can apply for up to £20,000 towards hardware or software and get specialist advice on where to invest. Council decision · GOV.UK grant guidance

The money goes to Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which already manages the North West programme. This year the government paid Liverpool City Region its share directly, so the authority had to approve the transfer.

It covers programme delivery across Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral. The council hasn’t specified how much will reach firms as grants. Officer report, section 4

The transfer is due to take effect on 14 November if nobody calls it in for scrutiny by 13 November. In the meantime, manufacturers can already speak to a Made Smarter adviser. Made Smarter North West

In this guide Eligibility and grants · Local projects · Results so far · Project payback · How to apply · Funding timetable and council records

Who can apply for Made Smarter support, and how much is available?

You can approach Made Smarter if you run a small workshop. The government listing covers North West manufacturers that have started trading, including those with fewer than ten employees and those with 10 to 249. The first conversation is with an adviser. A fully funded assessment can help you decide where to invest, even if you haven’t chosen a supplier or settled on a piece of equipment.

Headcount is only one part of the check. Made Smarter North West lists manufacturing and engineering firms with up to 249 employees and either turnover below £36 million or a balance sheet total below £18 million. If turnover is above the threshold, check the balance sheet figure before ruling your business out. North West eligibility criteria

Depending on what the assessment identifies, support can include specialist advice, help for the people leading the change, and a contribution towards eligible hardware or software. GOV.UK eligibility and support · Regional assessment process

The published North West grant rate is 50% of eligible costs, up to £20,000. Here’s what that means for three different quotations, assuming the adviser confirms every item qualifies and the full rate is awarded. GOV.UK grant terms

It’s easy to look at a £40,000 quotation, see a potential £20,000 grant and put £20,000 in the budget. Then someone has to buy the fixtures, free up an operator for training and cover the shift while the machine is installed. A software licence might also introduce a bill that comes round every year.

I’d ask the adviser for three things in writing before placing an order. Which items will they fund? When can you commit to the supplier? When will the grant actually reach your bank account? Your share of the cost and the cash you need on the day can be quite different figures.

Who will do the work? Funding for a digital intern

Finding somebody with time to implement a project can be harder than choosing the software. Made Smarter North West offers up to 300 hours at £13.45 an hour towards employing a student or recent graduate, up to £4,035. Your business employs the intern, runs payroll and receives the funding in arrears after each payroll period. Those payment terms apply to the internship. Check the payment schedule for any equipment grant separately. Made Smarter internship terms

Five Made Smarter projects in Liverpool City Region

Two earlier projects show how differently firms have used the programme. In Huyton, JFM Workwear put £27,000 into a customer portal and the way it handles orders. Over in Liverpool, kitchen maker H Miller Bros bought a CNC router and software to take a design through to cutting. Both had help from Made Smarter.

I like those two examples because they raise a question worth asking before you buy a machine. When a customer rings to chase an order, where is the job? It might be waiting for time on the shop floor. It might still be in the office because nobody has signed off the drawing. Liverpool kitchen project · Huyton workwear project

H Miller Bros, Liverpool | From the kitchen drawing to the cutting table

The hardwood kitchen maker secured £19,000 towards a £39,000 project combining a nesting CNC router with design software. Director Howard Miller said the team had at least halved the time it took to complete a project, with the same people. He gave credit to changes in sales, administration, product design and working practices alongside the equipment.

That detail matters in a joinery business. Measuring the minutes spent cutting one panel tells you what the router can do. Measuring the days from the customer approving a drawing to the full kitchen being ready for assembly tells you what delivery date you can promise. Growth Platform, 29 July 2025

JFM Workwear, Huyton | Making repeat orders easier to process

JFM secured £11,000 towards a £27,000 investment in a customer portal and the way orders move through the business. The company forecast three new jobs and training for eight existing roles. The June announcement recorded those as forecasts.

Anyone who handles repeat orders will recognise the opportunity here. The buyer knows which uniform they want, but someone may still have to confirm the sizes, the logo or which version the customer approved last time. If you’re considering a portal, pull your last 30 repeat orders. How many could go straight through to production? For the ones that got stuck, would the portal have collected the missing detail? Growth Platform, 19 June 2026

Ess Pee Fabrications, Liverpool | Replacing a mill and learning from the first installation

Ess Pee invested in a Haas CNC Mini Mill as the first stage of a five-year machining upgrade. The mill introduced automated probing and access to real-time machine data. For suppliers following the investment, the first machine is a confirmed purchase. The case study describes later purchases as part of the company’s plan.

Ess Pee’s figures give another machine shop something to compare. Its £20,000 grant helped replace a 24-year-old mill. With automated probing, a setup that used to take around 30 minutes took about five. For a short batch, those 25 minutes come off the job before the first part is cut. Ess Pee also reported that margins on repeat jobs had risen by around 8%. That figure applies to repeat work and comes from the company’s account. Made Smarter case study, 2 January 2026

Asset Lifecycle Solutions, Runcorn | Keeping track of work across the business

The IT asset disposal and lifecycle specialist invested £35,000 in an enterprise resource planning system. Director Paul Callaghan highlighted the ability to see what was happening across the business. Growth Platform reported a £20,000 grant.

If you’ve been doing the sums, you’ll have spotted that £20,000 is more than half of £35,000. The published account gives no breakdown that reconciles the two figures with today’s 50% rate.

For anyone preparing a similar proposal, the figure to budget against is the one the programme confirms for your own eligible costs. Growth Platform, 19 June 2026 · Current government guidance

Organica UK, Birkenhead | Finding lost time on a filling line

When demand for its cleaning products rose, Organica needed to know how much more it could get out of the lines it already had. Sensors on two blending tanks and three filling lines recorded what went into the tanks and how many bottles made it through filling, capping and labelling. A Made Smarter digital intern helped put the system in place.

Operators could see a stoppage and its cause while the line was down. In a case study published in July 2021, Organica reported a 20% increase in productivity. Its figures for future energy and waste savings were still forecasts. For a director weighing up another filling line, that’s a question worth taking back to the factory. How much output could the existing line recover if the team could see where it kept stopping? Organica UK case study, 29 July 2021

What the evidence says about investment, jobs and productivity

Two numbers from July 2025 are easy to mix up. Made Smarter had reached its 400th technology project across the North West. Within that total, 68 projects were in Liverpool City Region. Growth Platform reported £1.4 million in local matched funding and £4.5 million in total project investment.

That works out at roughly £3.20 of local project spending for each £1 of grant. The £3.20 includes the original pound. It’s a useful measure of how much investment the businesses and programme financed together. Working out what those businesses earned back would require their results after installation. Growth Platform’s local and regional breakdown

By September 2026 the North West programme had supported 451 technology projects, up 51, or about 13%, on the July 2025 milestone. It had also helped draw up 705 digital roadmaps.

Those roadmaps record businesses working out what to do next. Some of those same businesses may also appear in the project total, so adding the two figures would overstate what we know. July 2025 milestone · September 2026 programme update

There’s a more searching piece of research behind the local announcements. Ipsos UK and George Barrett evaluated Made Smarter across five English regions. Their report, dated June 2025 and published by government in July 2026, found that 78% of participating firms surveyed said they had adopted industrial digital technology after taking part. Businesses described better planning, lower costs and improvements for customers.

Could the researchers see those changes in company performance? Their stronger analysis of recent participants found no statistically significant effect on turnover, employment or productivity over the period studied.

That leaves open a question for each owner: where, and how soon, do you expect the improvement to show up in your own figures? Independent evaluation, executive summary, pp. 7–8 · Publication record

Take an estimator who gets half a day a week back. If there’s a queue of profitable enquiries on their desk, that time could help the business quote sooner and win work. If the order book is already full and inspection is running a week behind, winning more of the same jobs could make delivery worse. I’d want sales and production in the room together before putting extra turnover in the business case.

How to work out whether a digital project pays back

Suppose a subcontract manufacturer spends £32,000 on job-tracking software and hardware. A £16,000 grant leaves £16,000 to find. Add £4,000 for implementation outside the grant, and the business has £20,000 of its own money to recover.

The production manager expects better scheduling to cut paid overtime by £1,200 a month. The software costs £200 a month to run. At £1,000 a month in net savings, the investment pays back in 20 months. But what if overtime only falls by £700? After the licence fee, the business saves £500 a month. The same investment now takes 40 months to pay back.

These are illustrative figures. Both calculations leave out tax, financing and additional sales.

Before debating which estimate is right, I’d go back through three months of overtime sheets. How many late shifts were down to scheduling? How many started with a late drawing, a breakdown or a queue at inspection? If most of the overtime came from jobs waiting for a drawing, a screen on the shop floor might tell you they’re late a little earlier. You’d still need someone to fix the handover.

Other projects call for different checks. These are the records I’d take to a first meeting.

Use the same customer, part family or type of job when you compare results. A busy month of repeat work can make the new system look brilliant. A month of one-offs can make the same investment look poor. If a handful of customers account for most of the extra handling, it’s worth checking what those accounts cost to serve. We’ve looked at that separately in our guide to customer profitability in manufacturing.

How to apply for Made Smarter support in the North West

Start on the Made Smarter North West programme page and select “Start your journey”. Tell the adviser what you make, where you make it and what you’re trying to improve. They can assess your business and help draw up a plan.

For the first meeting, I’d take one recent job that should have made money and didn’t. Bring the quote, the job card, the actual hours and the person who had to sort it out. They’ll usually remember the bit the paperwork misses. Perhaps the customer changed the drawing after setup. Perhaps two people spent a morning looking for material the system said was in stock.

Once you agree what needs to change, ask the adviser to confirm eligible costs, quotation requirements, order and claim dates, and how payment works. Give somebody in the business responsibility for recording the starting figure. When the first month of comparable work is complete, you’ll have something to check the investment against.

If you can show an adviser where a job lost half a shift last week, you’ve already given them something worth working on. Register your interest with Made Smarter

Funding timetable and council records

The Growth Company delivers Made Smarter across the six boroughs, with the Liverpool City Region Growth Hub coordinating the work locally. The council’s published records trace this year’s allocation from the original proposal through to the November vote. Council officer report, section 4

Council records — September programme notice · October investment notice · November decision.

One date matters if you are putting together a capital budget. 31 March 2027 is the end of the financial year this decision covers. The government’s settlement lists the 2027/28 and 2028/29 Made Smarter figures as still to follow. If you want to trial a system on one line and roll it out next year, cost the second phase separately until you know what support will be available. Government settlement, Made Smarter line and footnote 3

Matthew Fitzpatrick is the founder of Fox Healey & Co., a commercial performance consultancy for manufacturing and engineering SMEs. Sources checked on 8 November 2026.