page_title: South West England
section_title: Dorset
hierarchical_section_title: South West England / Economy and industry / Dorset
caption_attribution_description: English: Airbus Voyager Air-to-Air Refueling Tanker (based on the Airbus A330-200) showing the starboard Cobham underwing refueling pod. Aircraft is taxiing for departure from RAF Fairford after the Royal International Air Tattoo 2011
context_page_description: South West England is one of nine official regions of England. It is the largest in area, covering 9,200 square miles, and consists of the counties of Bristol, Cornwall, Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Wiltshire, as well as the Isles of Scilly. Five million people live in South West England.
  The region includes the West Country and much of the ancient kingdom of Wessex. The largest city is Bristol. Other major urban centres include Plymouth, Swindon, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Exeter, Torbay, and the South East Dorset conurbation which includes Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch. There are eight cities: Salisbury, Bath, Wells, Bristol, Gloucester, Exeter, Plymouth and Truro. It includes two entire national parks, Dartmoor and Exmoor; and four World Heritage Sites: Stonehenge, the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape, the Jurassic Coast and the City of Bath. The northern part of Gloucestershire, near Chipping Campden, is as close to the Scottish border as it is to the tip of Cornwall. The region has by far the longest coastline of any English region.
  The region is at the first level of NUTS for Eurostat purposes.
context_section_description: New Look is in Weymouth; it is Britain's second-biggest value clothing retailer, with over 800 stores in 21 countries. Wytch Farm (BP) is the UK's largest onshore oil field. Meggitt is a leading aerospace and defence contractor, based west of Bournemouth Airport, with Hobbycraft, at a former BAC works in Hurn, close to West Parley. The Royal Armoured Corps is based at Bovington Camp, and next door is the Bovington Tank Museum; the Army has three armoured regiments (Royal Dragoon Guards, Royal Tank Regiment and King's Royal Hussars) and 227 FV4034 70-tonne Challenger 2 tanks; Germany has around 1,000 tanks and Russia has 3,300. Westwind Air Bearings (owned by Novanta) is off the A352 at Wareham St Martin, west of Poole, near Holton Heath railway station, with Mathmos (lighting), founded by Edward Craven Walker who invented the lava lamp.
  Tata Consultancy Services (former Unisys Insurance Services before 2010) is in Bournemouth. Imagine Publishing, a magazine publisher, with The Mortgage Works (owned by Nationwide Building Society), is at the A35/A347 Richmond Hill Roundabout; Organix is in the centre; McCarthy & Stone, who make much of Britain's retirement housing, is on the B3066. LV= (insurance) is at Frizzell House at Westbourne at the County Gates Gyratory A35/A338 roundabout. JPMorgan have their large Chaseside site at the A3060/A338 junction opposite the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, RIAS (insurance) and Teachers Assurance, towards Holdenhurst.
  Merlin Entertainments (who own Sea Life Centres, and are the world's second largest theme park operator after Disney) is in Poole with a former division, Aquarium Technology, at the end of the A350 near the Twin Sails bridge. Ryvita is made in Parkstone on the B3061. Fitness First, the largest privately owned health club group in the world, originated in Bournemouth and is now globally headquartered south of Fleet's Corner. Siemens Traffic Controls make most of the UK's traffic lights west near Fleet's Corner; the main traffic light in the UK is the Siemens Helios (the other make is the Peek Elite). North of Fleets Lane, south of the Wessex Gate Retail Park, is Parvalux, on the A3049 on the West Howe Ind Estate in Wallisdown, which makes geared DC electric motors and gearboxes; further south is Faerch Plast (former Sealed Air, which makes trays for food) then Fitness First, and Aeronautical & General Instruments; further north is Lush, the cosmetics company, with Hamworthy Wärtsilä (Finnish), and Hamworthy Combustion (owned by Koch Industries), at the A349/A3049 junction in Fleetsbridge, is an international engineering consultancy. 
  Sunseeker International is a main motor yacht manufacturer; it made the boat in the opening sequence of The World Is Not Enough. The Special Boat Service is based at RM Poole, home of the Navy's amphibious warfare section, off the B3068 at Hamworthy in the west of Poole. Tangerine Confectionery (former Parrs) made gums and jellies on the Redlands Trading Estate off the A3040 near Branksome railway station to the east. Aish Technologies makes console (display) systems for the Royal Navy off B3068 in Alderney.
  Cobham plc, in Wimborne Minster towards Leigh, is a world-leader in air-to-air refuelling, developed by Sir Alan Cobham at RAF Tarrant Rushton, and aircraft antennas. Durable UK (office products) is in Wimborne; Caterpillar's Wimborne Marine Power Centre make Perkins Sabre marine diesel generators on Ferndown Ind Est off the A31; to the south is Farrow & Ball (the well-known paint manufacturer) in Hampreston and Stapehill, in Ferndown. Manitou UK, owner of the American Gehl Company and from Nanterre in France, is based at Verwood on the Ebblake Ind Est off the B3081 near the Hampshire boundary. Sigma-Aldrich UK (pharmaceuticals) are off the B3092 on Brickfield Business Park in Gillingham, next to the River Stour and railway. Cygnus Instruments, on the B3144 in Dorchester, is the leading manufacturer of ultrasonic thickness gauges, developing the technique in the early 1980s. Edwards Sports Products of Bridport, owned by Broxap of Staffordshire, 
caption: Cobham underwing refuelling pod on an RAF Voyager, or Airbus A330 MRTT (the aircraft is made at CASA, part of Airbus Defence and Space, in Getafe in central Spain)
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "SP500UZ", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Version 1.1", "Image DateTime": "2011:07:18 10:19:20", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "996", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5620", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3884", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/640", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Creative", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:07:18 10:19:20", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:07:18 10:19:20", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "297/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "83/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2816", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2112", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1714", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}