The UK’s first large-scale bioprocessing centre has now opened in Edinburgh. Based at Heriot-Watt University the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) will research the area and promote projects which are ready to be scaled up.
The service will deal with a gap in the provision of such facilities of this size in the UK and indeed in Europe.
Industrial biotechnology is a growing part of Scottish business set to bring £900 million to the Scottish economy by 2025. Many of the research and projects are very new concepts and so need to be tested before being brought to the market.
It will mean savings on the expense of pilot scale operations as all projects will be able to share the testing facilities right here in the capital rather than taking the ideas abroad.
This facility will be flexible enough to cover all types of industrial bioprocessing; to date there is interest in using the centre for projects as broad as therapeutic antibodies, skin care products, commodity chemicals and bio fuels, showing how widely it can be used by existing industries in the UK.
Ian Archer, Technical Director at IBioIC stated: “We are delighted to be cutting the ribbon on the site today, following an intensive build project over the past two years. The centre opens a wealth of possibility for industry in Scotland and the wider UK and we would like to encourage applications to use the centre from every sector. There will be a technical team available to help non-experts fully utilise the centre, so we hope to see some truly unique and cutting edge projects come from the facility.”
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