By High Growth Scotland editorial
Dundee has spent several years assembling the physical and institutional building blocks of a life-sciences cluster, and the shape of that effort is now largely in place. At its centre is the University of Dundee’s Life Sciences Innovation Hub, a 5,000 square-metre facility built to house high-growth biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, delivered by Robertson Construction Tayside and backed by a £20.2 million Scottish Government investment through the Tay Cities Region Deal. The Hub also draws support from Scottish Enterprise, the Wolfson Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation and the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The building is one strand of a wider programme.
The Growing the Tay Cities Biomedical Cluster project received £25 million from the Scottish Government under the Tay Cities Deal, with the stated aim of driving innovation-led growth through new company formations, inward investment, sustainable jobs and training. It builds on the University’s research strengths in drug discovery and medical technologies.
Three capital projects sit under that programme. The Regional Innovation Hub at Dundee Technopole is designed to anchor high-growth spin-outs generated by the region’s research activity; a medical technologies environment at Ninewells Hospital, the Tayside Innovation MedTech Ecosystem, is intended to move new technologies from prototype to NHS adoption; and the University’s Thiel cadaveric facilities are being expanded to support device development and clinical training.
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The case for the investment rests on long-dated economic projections. An independent assessment predicts 281 new biomedical jobs by 2033, rising to 800 by 2053, and more than £190 million of benefit to the local economy over the same period. Those are patient-capital numbers, and the cluster’s progress will be measured less by any single building opening than by the pipeline of companies it forms, funds and keeps in the region.
