Sci-Tech Daresbury firms collaborate on £21.5m worth of business

The business generated through Sci-Tech Daresbury companies, universities and national science and research body the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grew from £4.9m in 2014 to £21.5m in 2015.

Businesses at the Cheshire site, a location for high-tech business and leading edge science, found that 74 per cent of them were collaborating with either STFC or a university. Six out of ten of the companies surveyed were collaborating with at least one business based at the site, the survey also found.

Tenant businesses were particularly working closely with the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster.

IT businesses located at Sci-Tech Daresbury include Pinnacle Computing, Urban IT Solutions and CoServit.

Collaboration with STFC, meanwhile, was focused on the application of high performance computing (HPC), big data analytics and cognitive computing technologies.

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.”

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.

He added: “It is especially important for SMEs to be able to access globally significant facilities and expertise on a flexible, scalable and cost-effective basis as they engage in research and development. The sheer range of facilities at Sci-Tech Daresbury are part of what makes the site unique and so attractive to tenants.”