Spin-outs return £70m to Manchester University

MANCHESTER University said it has generated £70m from spin-outs over the last 10 years.

The revenue has come from the sale of shares, licensing income, intellectual property grants and contracts, associated with more than 30 companies which have attracted £245m of private investment.

The university’s commercialisation body UMI3 has worked with companies such as Nanoco which is now attracting international interest in its quantum dot technology and pioneering graphene firm 2-DTech which was sold to Versarien earlier this year.

It has also licensed University of Manchester technologies to industry for medical, engineering and other specialist applications.

Chief executive Clive Rowland said: “The work that we carry out with our academic colleagues is very exciting and rewarding. We have weathered the external financial shocks well, which is a testament to my colleagues’ persistence and the scale and quality of the University’s inventions and software, which gives us confidence for continued progress over the next ten years.”

Professor Luke Georghiou, the university’s vice president for research and innovation said: “As a University we have to ensure that the work we do has impact beyond academia, yielding economic social and cultural benefits. UMI3 is a very important interface, it helps us get our IP out to key target groups, bringing health-improving, quality of life enhancing, environmentally efficient and sustainable technologies into the market place. It is great to be able to take stock of these achievements as we move into the next decade of delivering innovation especially on the back of George Osborne’s recent announcements about science investment in the region.”