Deal to create £8.5m 'deep tech' building announced

Science Creates has helped over 100 start up companies

A £8.5m project to help support "spin-out" tech companies is being launched.

Science Creates is working with the University of Bristol on a "major new incubator" building that could house up to 275 new businesses.

The building - named OMX - will be based at the new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus in Bristol.

Dr Harry Destecroix, founder of Science Creates, said: "All we want to do is help world-class engineers and scientists who have discovered important technological breakthroughs, to build impactful deep tech companies."

'Powerhouse'

A spin-out is a new company that is formed to apply academic research in a commercial context.

They mainly deal with developing "deep tech" - merging high-tech engineering innovation with scientific discovery.

Dr Jon Hunt, the University of Bristol's Executive Director for Research, Enterprise and Innovation, said: "The University of Bristol is a great powerhouse for spin-outs.

"I hope and expect many of these companies will thrive and grow to help us deliver on our mission to make a positive impact locally, nationally, and globally by addressing society's greatest challenges."

'State-of-the-art'

The £8.5m funding will be used to refurbish an existing industrial unit, providing state-of-the-art facilities for the spin-outs.

These will include wet-labs, high security, and ultra-fast computer networking, hosting spin-out companies working in quantum, biotech and AI.

Mentoring of the new companies, from the West and beyond, will start from next year.

As well as the new building, Science Creates is also expanding its IT network to increase the rate of data which can be transferred over the internet at once.

The investment has been enabled with a £4.75m award from the Research England Development (RED) fund.