The Leopard Cluster principle for expanding manufacture
In 1990, with two industrial colleagues, Professor Bush established NEPPCO (the North of England Plastics Processors’ Consortium) bringing together a network of up to 70 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to apply the scientific and systems methods developed for very large plants making simple chemicals, to the generally much smaller processing plants making more complex composite polymeric materials, a concept strongly supported by a series of contracts awarded by Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry from 1994 to 2005. In 2000 NEPPCO was converted into a limited company and expanded its range well beyond the polymer industry. This now stands as a prototype Leopard© Cluster[2] for creating new manufacturing capacity in Britain. The products Rollet© and Biokab©, which emerged from this work won innovation awards in 2004 and 2005. In 2007 Professor Bush joined the advisory board of the innovation centre at a major US university.
Appointed Emeritus Professor of Process Manufacture and Polymer Engineering at Manchester in 2005, Professor Bush is currently engaged on a number of projects, among which polymer composite materials, control of economic processes and design of nuclear energy systems are prominent. In 2009, Professor Bush was named Man of the Year for England by the American Biographical Institute for his scientific and political contributions to his country. In 2011 his paper on Energy and Emissions (with D R MacDonald) was awarded the Hanson Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.
Political Work
In 2007 Professor Bush, together with Lord Tebbit, delivered the first of the Sir James Goldsmith Memorial lectures, on the subject of “Britain’s spinning out of control”,which was the underlying theme of his 2010 campaign to be elected to the British parliament. The full text of the lecture can be found under Texts of Speeches in the “Politics and Education” section of this website.