Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, Leader of Manchester City Council, Bev Craig, and the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Japan, Greg Clark MP will lead a delegation to Japan later this year as part of a mission that will celebrate and strengthen bilateral ties in diplomacy, trade and investment, net zero and innovation, and culture and sport.
Mayor Andy Burnham, Cllr Bev Craig, and Greg Clark MP – with support from a delegation comprised of founding members of the Greater Manchester Japan Steering Group – will visit Osaka and Tokyo between the 4 and 8 December.
The delegation will engage with political leaders, trade officials, and Japanese business, with the aim of broadening and intensifying political, business, cultural, and civic links. The mission will also establish Greater Manchester’s involvement with EXPO25, the upcoming World Expo event that will take place in Osaka between April and October 2025.
The Japanese economy is one of the biggest in the world and is identified as a key area for growth in Greater Manchester’s international strategy. In 2021, Greater Manchester exported £56m worth of goods to Japan. Japan is also in the city-region’s top 10 markets for export services with over £161m in export services provided in 2020.
Greater Manchester has strong ties with Japan that date back to the 19th century, when a group of students from Osaka travelled to Greater Manchester to learn about the revolutionary industrial technology that was being used in the local cotton industry. This first Greater Manchester-Osaka collaboration boosted the industrial revolution taking place in the East, and helped Osaka become known as the Manchester of the East.
More recently, the city-region’s engagement with Osaka has included a three-year bilateral partnership on Net Zero involving local government officials as well as industry and university partners from both sides. A key milestone of this relationship was the commitment from one of the world’s largest air conditioning and heat pumps manufacturers, Japanese firm Daikin, investing in Greater Manchester to help retrofit 1,000 homes.
Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said:
“I am very pleased to be leading this mission to Japan alongside Bev Craig, Greg Clark, and the Greater Manchester Japan Steering Group.
“Japan is the third largest economy in the world – bigger than the UK and Germany combined – and Greater Manchester already has significant links with the country which date right back to the 19th Century. Just as our collaboration in that time helped to spark the Industrial Revolution in the East, we believe our collaboration today could help boost a new technological revolution based on innovation and net zero advances. Our ties run particularly deep with Osaka, the so-called Manchester of the East, which shares many similarities with our city-region including a rich industrial and textile heritage.
“As well as numerous civic and cultural ties we have with Osaka and Japan, we have a very successful partnership with Japanese manufacturer Daikin. This partnership is already helping 1,000 homes across the city-region benefit from low-carbon retrofitting trials. Japan is a world leader in advanced energy-efficient technologies, and as Greater Manchester continues its own journey to net zero by 2038, I’m determined to see how we can further learn and collaborate with our friends and partners in Japan.”
