This month DIRDI & Coltraco moved into our new offices and laboratories at Explorer2 at The North East Technology Park – NETPark. We are proud to be based in the Northeast and this move reflects our long-term commitment not only to building scientific and industrial capability in the region, but also to generating “economic hope”: creating opportunities, skills and meaningful careers for those who have had fewer of them than ourselves.
Moving into our new laboratories is an important step in our commitment to “Newtonian Discovery” and building out our UK Sovereign capability as a UK Sovereign integrated research-to-manufacture organisation (UKSIRTMO). The new facilities will allow us to expand our prototyping, development, and manufacturing capacity and our capability to develop specialised and novel technologies from original research at UK institutions.
Rebuilding the Bridge Between R&D and Manufacturing
Manufacturing as a component of GDP in the UK declined from 17% in 1990 to 9% in 2026. Over the same period however the percentage of UK GDP devoted to R&D increased from 1.7% to 2.7% of GDP. For us, this points to both a challenge and an opportunity. Britain remains capable of outstanding scientific and technological research. The task is to ensure that more of that discovery is carried through into development, products, and commercially successful domestic manufacturing.
For those prepared to step forward and rebuild that connection, the opportunity is considerable.
This is central to why we established DIRDI. We believe that scientific, engineering, and technological endeavour should be grounded in decent values and pursued all the way from fundamental discovery to practical and commercial accomplishment: from Newtonian Discovery to Edisonian Commercialisation.
As part of this commitment, we are always looking to grow talent in the Northeast and support in local students. We have developed at Durham University our “Rolling Undergraduate Internship Programme”, selecting undergraduates of “fine heart and fine mind” to work with us in paid, part-time roles. We pride ourselves that we pay more than minimum wage and we learned that if the brightest and best stayed with us for 2 years, that they achieved both their first-class degree and their first career choice. Today 90% of our team are Durham graduates.
UKSIRTMO is therefore a bridge between both, occupying a near-unique position in the United Kingdom, imbued with a spirit that is built on faithful endeavour and commitment, and borne in empirical accomplishment and “Edisonian” success.
We are committed to the application of learned endeavour.
The Great Exhibition of 1951 foresaw the United Kingdom’s need to re-engage with the scientific “light and liberty” principles of the Enlightenment which we embody in DIRDI’s Lux et Liberte, and which led to so much of the world’s scientific and engineering advances which we still see in use today.
Our Director said:
“I wish our Durham research team every success in their move to our new laboratory at the North East Technology Park (NETPark). This larger space comes with more facilities and will help us in DIRDI’s mission to bring together outstanding academic science and real-world problems, creating a credible route from discovery through to technologies that can deliver genuine industrial, societal, and national benefit.”
