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Siemens 60 CORPORATE PARTNERSHIP Siemens AG has five locations in north west England, including three in Manchester. '1843... when Siemens recognised the value of having a strong base in the north west...' Manchester is the home of Siemens Industry and Power Distribution activities. The modern fleet of First Trans-Pennine trains are maintained at the company's depot in the east of the city. Siemens has always been strong in the UK, ever since 1843 when Sir William Siemens (originally Wilhelm von Siemens) chose the UK to exploit an invention made by the three Siemens brothers in document copying. At that time the north west of England was the home of industrialisation, making it the obvious place in which to exploit their invention. By the 1960s Siemens had become one of the largest electronic engineering companies in the world and again chose the north west as one of two key locations for re- investment in the UK. The decision was largely driven by the investment the region's businesses made in industrial controls. When expansion from the base in Congleton was needed, south Manchester, with its proximity to the airport and its global connections, was the obvious location for marketing, sales, application engineering, project engineering and project implementation. A fairly recent example of local innovation goes back to the late 1980s when Siemens was looking for a base from which to develop inverter technology for small motors. This product, new to Siemens, was developed in Congleton and led to the manufacturing centre becoming the World Centre of Competence for the low voltage range of drive inverter technology. Its first product on the market in Europe was released in 1994 and today some 500,000 are made every year from that Congleton base, of which 98% are exported to 79 countries.

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