Nottinghamruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Pharmacy, health & bioscience
Boots at Thane Road, BioCity Nottingham, Nottingham University Hospitals, Alliance Healthcare
Boots was founded in Nottingham in 1849 and its Beeston campus includes the Grade I listed 'D10' factory of 1932 by Owen Williams, one of the most important modernist buildings in Britain. BioCity, in the old Boots laboratories, was the UK's first bioscience incubator and is still the anchor of the local life-science economy.
Data, credit & financial services
Experian's UK operational headquarters at NG2, Capital One UK, Ikano Bank, Nottingham Building Society
Experian runs one of the world's largest consumer credit businesses out of the Sir John Peace Building at NG2 rather than out of London, and Capital One's UK operation is here too. The concentration of credit-risk, data-science and analytics work is far higher than the city's size would suggest.
Games, hobby & creative
Games Workshop at Lenton, Warhammer World, Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, Antenna
Games Workshop designs, manufactures and ships Warhammer from a single site in Lenton, with a visitor centre and exhibition attached — the entire global hobby is run from a Nottingham industrial estate, which very few people outside it realise.
Universities & research
University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University, the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, the Nottingham Geospatial Institute
Magnetic resonance imaging was developed at Nottingham — Sir Peter Mansfield shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Medicine for it, and the imaging centre named after him is still a world centre for MRI physics. Between the two universities the city carries around 60,000 students.
Fashion, design & retail
Paul Smith, Boohoo's Nottingham operations, Speedo's UK design heritage, the Lace Market's design studios
Paul Smith opened his first shop on Byard Lane in 1970, three metres square and open two days a week, and never moved the design operation out of the city. Before that Nottingham lace clothed the world — the Lace Market is a whole quarter of Victorian warehouses built on it.
Logistics & advanced manufacturing
East Midlands Airport's freight operations, DHL and Royal Mail hubs, Rolls-Royce at Derby, Toyota at Burnaston
East Midlands Airport, half an hour away, is the UK's largest dedicated air-freight hub, and the M1/A46 corridor around it carries a very large share of national distribution. Rolls-Royce's aero-engine plant at Derby and Toyota's at Burnaston are both inside a commute.
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