You may have caught some news from us in the August issue of unLTD magazine, that we are collaborating with University of Sheffield to increase our lab facilities at Sheffield Technology Parks. If you missed this story, read the feature in unLTD here, or see the full copy below.

In a move set to propel innovation and growth of early-stage companies, Sheffield Technology Parks (STP) and University of Sheffield are teaming up to build new lab spaces in the city centre.

This collaboration comes after University of Sheffield is once again recognised as one of the top institutions in England for developing intellectual property (IP) and commercialising research, typically as spinout companies, according to the latest Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) published in 2023. 

Over the past four years, company founders at the University of Sheffield have outpaced even Oxford - when benchmarked for the size of university - in producing spinouts, with 22 companies emerging since 2020. These range from gene therapy startups like Crucible Therapeutics, AI firms such as Opteran, life sciences enterprises like Evolutor, and software companies like FourJaw Manufacturing. 

Despite this success, a critical challenge has been the shortage of suitable space for these innovative startups in the city.

Through this new partnership, STP - already home to several University spinouts like Evolutor, Aegiq, and BOW - has received University funding to transform a corridor of five spaces into labs designed to accommodate University spinouts and organically grown science-based businesses.

The impact of STP’s support of sci-tech spinouts is already evident and the University is also committed to supporting its spinouts to embed in the regional ecosystem.  This has led to Evolutor, a biomanufacturing spinout, securing a bespoke labspace, allowing them to pursue growth plans and recruit Pippa Sinclair, a former PhD student from the University of Oxford, who relocated to Sheffield for the opportunity.

Examples like this underscore how better infrastructure for science-led businesses can attract highly skilled professionals to the city, generating higher-salaried jobs and contributing to the local economy. The financial boost provided through this partnership will help bring these goals to fruition far sooner.

“As a small economic development organisation we've worked hard to accommodate early stage life science businesses, but struggled to afford the expensive kit required by lab users and relied on them sourcing their own kit,” explains Tom Wolfenden, CEO of STP. “This often means spending thousands of their initial investment which could have been put to better use.”

“With this funding partnership we're pleased to now offer fully kitted labs enabling smoother entry and faster growth for the businesses, predominantly spinouts but also available to anyone with a good idea.”

The bigger picture

Local stakeholders, founders, and investors want to grow innovation-led, scalable businesses in Sheffield city centre. However, the lack of suitable clustering, incubation, and scale-up space for deep-tech, med-tech, and life-science companies has hindered these ambitions.

Andy Hogben, Head of Commercialisation at University of Sheffield adds, "We need more commercial space in the city centre to help Sheffield capture the potential jobs created by innovation-led, scalable businesses.  We're really pleased to partner with STP to create a small number of labs and we hope it boosts confidence that these companies will be part of our future city centre growth."

The new lab spaces at STP are part of the broader spatial and economic concept - known as the Sheffield Innovation Spine - to link the infrastructure required to grow knowledge-led businesses in the city centre, forming a natural route from University of Sheffield’s campus to West Bar Square and capitalising on existing developments of Kelham Island and Castlegate through to Sheffield Hallam University.

Partnerships like this one will be crucial to securing the success of innovation-led businesses, as well as the economic growth of our city.