Photon2026 speakers press UK photonics to grow its spin-outs into larger companies

The £50bn forecast for 2035 ^[8] assumes the recent pace holds. Revenue rose 20% between 2022 and 2024 ^[2], from roughly £15.4bn ^[1]. That is about 9.5% a year, compounded ^[2]. Getting from £18.5bn to £50bn by 2035 needs almost exactly the same rate, sustained for eleven years ^[3]. Two years is a short baseline for an eleven-year projection [c2, d3]. The Physics World report does not say who made the 2035 estimate, or whether the revenue figures are adjusted for inflation [c8, c2].

Divided by the PLG's own headcount, revenue per worker is at most about £247,000 ^[4]. The sector's contribution to the economy comes to at most about £115,000 per worker ^[5], and average revenue per company is at most about £15m ^[6]. These are ceilings because the PLG gives its worker and firm counts as minimums ^[4].

The 2035 projections pull against each other. If the 150,000 additional direct jobs ^[8] are added to today's workforce, headcount roughly triples while revenue grows about 2.7 times ^[7]. Revenue per worker would fall to about £222,000 ^[8]. The same forecast expects photonics to be one of the UK's three most productive manufacturing sectors ^[9]. Revenue per head and productivity are different measures, and both claims can hold if value added grows faster than sales.

The panel treated government policy as an asset and put the sector's weak point where companies try to grow. "The UK is really good at photonics and it should be something that the UK celebrates," said John Lincoln, chief executive of the PLG [c5, c20]. He credits part of that record to how widely the companies are spread across the country ^[21]. Ruth Oulton of the University of Bristol said many companies, including some in the US, want to move to the UK given its focus on, and support for, photonics and quantum ^[11]. "The UK government has a very strong and coherent story to tell and it gives a bit of stability and clarity for people coming here, which is really promising," she said ^[12].

Laura Young of the University of Newcastle, who works on medical technologies, said the UK could make more of "translational opportunities" in medical devices ^[17]. "Taking those early developments all the way through to products that have commercial or societal impact also makes it a more inviting domain for new talent to come to the UK," she said ^[18].

Chris Johnson is chief scientific adviser at the Department of Business, Innovation, Science and Trade ^[14]. In July the renamed department absorbed the science and innovation portfolios of the former Department for Science, Innovation and Technology ^[14]. Johnson compared photonics with synthetic biology, a sector that engaged venture capitalists to grow small and medium enterprises into larger businesses ^[13]. Photonics, he said, needs plans not only to generate start-ups and spin-outs but to plot their growth after that ^[15].