Scots biotech labs receive vital scale-up boost
18 Mar 2024
Scottish bio-based business will be able to access a state-of-the-art fermenter vital to develop products at scale, for the first time.
An £847,000 investment awarded to the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) through Scottish Enterprise, will support the purchase and installation of a 300-litre fermenter.
Until now Scots bio firms have had to seek assistance in England because they had no access to suitable provision north of the Border.
But the fermenter, to be hosted at FlexBio – IBioIC’s scale-up facility located at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, will in future provide more accessible support to biotechnology firms.
Proximity should ensure a greater number of bio-based are able to scale up from the laboratory to the manufacturing process. Industrial biotechnology has been identified by the Scottish executive as a strategic area of investment and essential to enable its goal of achieving net zero by 2045.
The FlexBio bioprocessing scale-up facility has supported over 60 projects, up to a capacity of 30 litres, since its launch in 2016. However the new investment will enable it to offer up to 10 times that volume.
CEO of IBioIC Mark Bustard commented that enabling access to critical infrastructure would boost growth in the wider bioeconomy and make it easier to realise net zero targets.
Jane Martin, managing director of innovation and investment at Scottish Enterprise, said:
“The challenge of creating an environment where more innovative companies in Scotland can really achieve scale is a critical focus of Scottish Enterprise. This development will be hugely beneficial for those with that level of ambition within Scotland’s growing industrial biotech sector. “
