One of the UK’s leading centres for technology and science businesses has undergone a rebrand after becoming an Enterprise Zone. Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus, will be known as Sci-Tech Daresbury from today.
The change comes as the campus’s Daresbury Laboratory this year celebrates its 50th birthday. New signage has been installed on the site.
Sci-Tech Daresbury is home to more than 110 high-tech companies and is experiencing rapid growth. Businesses there had a combined turnover of £28m last year.
Stephen Hammond MP (Parliamentary Private Secretary to Local Government and Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles) was also due to highlight Daresbury as a stand-out example of a successful Enterprise Zone in a speech at the London Chamber of Commerce today.
The site has seen some 26 new companies arrive in the first six months of this year. The new tenants come from a variety of sectors, including advanced engineering and materials, biomedical, digital ICT, mobile and energy and environmental technology.
Enterprise Zone status will allow business rates to be reinvested in the campus to provide important new campus support infrastructure and also specialist office, laboratory and technical space which could create up to 10,000 skilled jobs over the next 20 years.
Sci-Tech Daresbury is one of only two National Science and Innovation Campuses in the UK. It provides companies with access to world-class science facilities, including the ground-breaking Daresbury Laboratory and Cockcroft Institute, and two cutting-edge particle accelerators – a facility which has made a major contribution to the CERN project.
Sci-Tech Daresbury is a joint venture between Halton Borough Council, development company Langtree and the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester are all active on the site.
Professor Sir Howard Newby, chair of the Sci-Tech Daresbury Enterprise Zone board, said: “The new brand identity reflects the current success and future potential of what is already a globally-recognised destination where science and enterprise meet and where collaboration and connectivity are the watchwords.
“It is fitting that this new chapter in the site’s story should begin in this, its 50th birthday year, and should come as we witness unprecedented success in terms of new business arrivals and business growth.
“Our ambition is to create nothing less than a technology village which will be home to thousands of employees and hundreds of dynamic, science and technology-led businesses – a global magnet for investment, exploration and innovation.”
Announcing Enterprise Zone status, Prime Minister David Cameron said: “You have got a brilliant collaboration here of government-sponsored science, university-sponsored science, defence-industry science, health science, but also a thriving private sector. Here is a successful model, here is great collaboration between scientists and businesses, here is something to build on and an Enterprise Zone can make Daresbury even more successful in the future than it has been today.”