Four-fold increase in value of science park’s collaborations
THE value of collaboration undertaken by companies based at Sci-Tech Daresbury in Cheshire has quadrupled in a year, new figures reveal.
The business value of co-working between companies, universities and national science and research body the Science and Technology Facilities Council grew from £4.9m in 2014 to £21.5m in 2015.
A survey of businesses based at the Cheshire site, a world class location for high-tech business and leading edge science, found that 74% of them were collaborating with either STFC or a university.
Six out of 10 of the companies surveyed were collaborating with at least one business based at the site, the survey also found.
Businesses at the site were particularly working closely with the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster, but also overseas universities and others across the UK, including Imperial College, London, Oxford and Cambridge. Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Chester also enjoyed strong relationships with companies at the campus.
Collaboration with STFC, meanwhile, was strongly clustered around the Hartree Centre, which offers collaborative research, innovation and development services that accelerate the application of high performance computing (HPC), big data analytics and cognitive computing technologies.
However, many companies have also taken advantage of the facilities and equipment at the Innovations Technology Access Centre (I-TAC) and Campus Technology Hub.
The news, which comes out of the latest tenant survey to be conducted by Sci-Tech Daresbury, is evidence the campus is achieving its aim of accelerating growth for high-tech tenant businesses by driving collaboration.
Sci-Tech Daresbury is a private-public joint-venture partnership between developer Langtree, STFC and Halton Borough Council.
Professor Susan Smith, head of STFC Daresbury Laboratory, said: “The opportunity to collaborate and take advantage of expertise and facilities provided by partners is clearly a compelling selling point for Sci-Tech Daresbury.
“There is culture of open innovation at the site and we pro-actively promote interactions and collaborations with and between companies, the science base of STFC and the universities.
“Businesses tell us that the collaboration opportunities are of high strategic importance and frequently essential to their business model and growth.”
Christopher Jones, commercial director at Arcis Biotechnology, which is based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, said: “The opportunity to tap into both the facilities and expertise offered by STFC is of huge importance to our business and being located in this dynamic and connected community has brought us multiple benefits.”
Arcis, which is based at Sci-Tech Daresbury’s Innovation Centre, is a research and development company developing new technologies for the rapid isolation and purification of nucleic acids across multiple sectors. The business utilizes STFC’s I-TAC and enjoys collaborations with academic institutions and other SMEs on campus.
John Downes, group managing director of Langtree and chairman of the Sci-Tech Daresbury joint venture company, said the levels of collaboration were a signal of the nature of the site’s unique eco-system, which enables businesses of all sizes and kinds to find and work with partners.
