Scotland’s chief entrepreneur has revealed plans for a new ‘deeptech supercluster’ in a bid to support the advanced manufacturing sector.
Former Skyscanner executive Mark Logan said tech firms with advanced manufacturing applications currently either relocate out of the country or remain stuck at the prototype stage.
He said a lack of advanced manufacturing ‘pathways’ means they don’t have the capacity to scale their product lines – and therefore can’t grow.
Logan said the problem affects high-growth potential industries including robotics, pharmaceuticals, biotech, nanotechnology and compound semiconductor manufacture.
Unless addressed, he said the spinouts created from Scotland’s world-class universities will be lost to other locations in pursuit of the right conditions for growth.
As such he is proposing the creation of a ‘deeptech supercluster’ which will help companies move beyond prototyping and into a ‘limited-scale advanced manufacturing line’.
On LinkedIn he said: “According to the QS World Rankings, Scotland has per capita the highest concentration of world-class universities anywhere on Earth. These universities generate spinout activity derived from the research that they conduct. But it is difficult for these spinouts and other startups that need access to advanced manufacturing capabilities to find those pathways within Scotland, at least beyond the origination and prototyping stages.
“That constraint creates an impetus to relocate elsewhere or else causes the company to remain for too long in the prototyping stage. It also discourages the formation of spinouts in the first place. It’s also very expensive for an individual early-stage start-up to set up manufacturing premises, build out a manufacturing line for initial limited-scale manufacture and product iteration, and to hire the specialist supply-chain and process engineering expertise required.”
Logan announced a ‘phased, multi-year programme’ to establish a series of deeptech advanced manufacturing pathways across several technology domains.
He said the supercluster will rely on the strengths of existing tech education and mentoring support programmes, including the Scottish Government’s TechScaler, the Filament STAC programme for IoT startups and Converge. It would sit alongside those assets, stimulate more spinout creation and the flow of private capital into Scotland, he said.
In terms of specific details, he wrote:
- The entry point will be a deeptech startup which is ready to move beyond the prototyping stage.
- The pathway will provide a suitable physical environment to construct a limited-scale advanced manufacturing line.
- The startup will have access to shared supply chain discovery expertise, with both a local and international scope.
- Shared access to process engineering and optimisation expertise will also be available.
- Facilitated and discounted access to Scottish contract manufacturers will be included
Logan said the vision was a ‘bold one’ and will take several years to ‘fully realise. It will roll out nationally in one geographical location and one technology domain at a time, to prove it works, describing it as ‘phased and iterative’.
The first iteration will be at the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District in Renfrewshire, which is home to a major NMIS advanced manufacturing demonstrator and consulting site as well as the Medicine Manufacturing Innovation Centre, the Oligonucleotides Innovation Centre, with the Advanced Forming Research Centre (also part of NMIS) nearby.
A dedicated facility for manufacturing line set up will be built at the site and shared services for supply chain discovery support and process engineering will be established alongside.
The supercluster will also require collaboration from multiple partners including lead partner Scottish Enterprise, which is leading the funding approvals process across several funding channels, expected to be concluded in the first half of next year. Other partners include joint lead Strathclyde University, the National Robotarium at Heriot-Watt University, Aberdeen Energy Transition Zone, the University of Glasgow James Watt Nanofabrication Centre (JWNC) and the University of Edinburgh.