Hampshire's manufacturers: what the figures show

Manufacturing in Hampshire is easy to overlook. It rarely has a shopfront, yet the county council's list of key sectors includes aerospace, defence and security, marine and maritime, and space and satellite technology, all of which depend on people who make things. This piece looks at what the official figures say about the county's makers, where the work is concentrated, what has changed, and where people in the sector meet.

A note on the numbers first. The Office for National Statistics publishes its figures for three separate areas: "Hampshire" (the county council's eleven districts), Portsmouth and Southampton. Where we give a figure for "the county as a whole" below, we have added the three together.

How big the sector is

The ONS's Business Register and Employment Survey is the standard count of employees by industry. Its latest results, provisional figures for 2024 published on 28 October 2025, put manufacturing employment at:

• 44,000 in the Hampshire county council area, 7.1% of all employees there
• 8,000 in Portsmouth, 7.7% of employees in the city
• 4,000 in Southampton, 3.5% of employees in the city

That is around 56,000 people in all. For comparison, manufacturing was 7.2% of employees across Great Britain and 5.7% across the South East in the same survey. So the Hampshire county area sits close to the national share and well above the regional one, and Portsmouth sits above both.

The count of businesses tells a similar story. UK Business Counts, the ONS register of VAT and PAYE businesses as at March 2026 and published on 24 September 2026, lists 3,290 manufacturing enterprises in the Hampshire county area (4.8% of its 68,645 businesses), 315 in Portsmouth and 365 in Southampton. Across the whole UK, the ONS bulletin for 2026 counted 128,000 manufacturing businesses, 4.6% of the total.

What has changed since 2019

On the ONS's rounded figures:

• Manufacturing employees in the Hampshire county area fell from 52,000 in 2019 to 44,000 in 2024. In Portsmouth the figure went from 9,000 to 8,000.
• Manufacturing enterprises in the county area fell from 3,545 in March 2021 to 3,290 in March 2026, and in Portsmouth from 400 to 315.
• Nationally, the ONS counted 130,000 manufacturing businesses in 2025 and 128,000 in 2026, so the fall is not only a Hampshire story.

What the figures do show is a sector that has kept its share of local employment roughly in line with the national picture, and that is concentrated in a few high-value specialisms. The survey counts do not explain the reasons for the change, and we have not guessed at them here.

Where the specialisms are

The two-digit industry figures show where Hampshire's makers lean. In the 2024 employment survey, the county council area had about 6,000 employees making computer, electronic and optical products and about 3,000 making "other transport equipment", the category that covers aircraft, ships and their parts. Portsmouth had a further 1,750 in other transport equipment: 1.7% of the city's employees, about four times the share across Great Britain (125,000 of 31.5 million). The 2026 business count shows 535 enterprises in the county area in repair and installation of machinery, the largest single manufacturing group by number of businesses, followed by electronics (215) and machinery (195).

The councils' own descriptions fill in the picture:

• Aerospace and defence. Hampshire County Council's aerospace page describes the area as "one of the UK's leading aerospace and defence locations" and names BAE Systems, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, GE Aviation, Britten-Norman and Gulfstream among the firms with a significant presence. It also reports an emerging cluster of "over 150 businesses with interests in Jet Zero", most with one to ten employees.
• Portsmouth. The city council's Skills and Labour Market Strategy 2026 to 2030, published in March 2026, names BAE Systems, Airbus and Penta Precision, mentions the Portsmouth Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Cluster, and says the city's space industry employs "around 1,000 highly skilled professionals".
• Marine. A March 2026 skills report for Hampshire Chamber of Commerce's Local Skills Improvement Plan cites an April 2026 impact study putting the Hampshire and Solent maritime sector at 46,100 direct jobs and £4.6 billion of direct GVA a year, including "a dense cluster of boatyards, marinas, specialist manufacturers and superyacht refit businesses".

The big shows and the freeport

Two pieces of context matter for anyone selling into these supply chains.

Farnborough International Airshow is the county's largest trade event. Figures reported by ATC Network on 30 July 2026 gave 141,580 trade and public visitors at the 2026 show, a 41% increase on the previous one, with 353 firm commercial aircraft orders and 904 firm engine orders.

The Solent Freeport has tax sites at Dunsbury Park, the Navigator Quarter, and around Southampton Water, designated in 2022. Its 2025/26 annual report, as reported by The Manufacturer on 3 August 2026, said "almost £640m of investment has already been delivered across Freeport tax sites" and that the businesses occupying them plan "over 4,750 direct jobs". Those are plans, not jobs counted today.

The skills question

If there is one theme that comes up in every source, it is people. Hampshire Chamber of Commerce launched the Hampshire and the Solent Local Skills Improvement Plan 2026 to 2029 on 10 July 2026, naming advanced manufacturing among the area's core clusters and listing digital capability and green skills among the gaps. The maritime report behind it says electrotechnical skills "represent the most acute current gap across the sector", and that naval architects are "consistently hard to recruit".

For a small manufacturer, that is the practical case for getting out of the workshop now and then. The people who know where the apprentices, the subcontract machinists and the electrical engineers are tend to be in the same rooms as you.

What this means if you're going to events

Manufacturing networking in Hampshire is less about weekly breakfast groups and more about a handful of event types:

• Expos and supplier days. The B2B expos at Farnborough and Southampton put many suppliers under one roof for a morning. Browse expos and conferences.
• Sector meet-ups. Things Connected (connected devices and sensors) and Space South Central's Orbit meetings both gather at Southampton Science Park, and Venturefest South brings founders, researchers and investors together. See talks.
• Innovation centres. Fareham Innovation Centre and BASE Bordon Innovation Centre run their own networking mornings, and both have venue pages: Fareham Innovation Centre and BASE Bordon Innovation Centre.
• Business support. The Solent Business Growth Service runs one-to-one clinics that cover skills, apprenticeships and funding. Our business support page explains what support bodies usually offer.

A few habits help at a trade show or supplier morning. Decide in advance which three or four stands or people you want to meet. Bring a one-line description of what you make and what you need, such as a finishing process, a test house or an apprentice, because "we're an engineering firm" starts fewer useful conversations. Follow up within a week, while they still remember the conversation.

The listings below are as listed on hampshire.events; check details with each organiser before you go. For more, see what's on in Farnborough, Fareham, Portsmouth and Southampton, or this week across the county.

Correction: an earlier version of this article called this a manufacturing renaissance. The figures do not support that, so the word has been removed.