HIGH TECH SITE LAUNCHES IN LEICESTER

A new industrial zone called Space City has launched in Leicester to build on the city’s growing reputation in the space sector, to breed fresh talent and attract more international businesses.

The space cluster takes in some £233 million of existing and planned buildings on land to the north of the city centre, with the aim of attracting millions of pounds of investment and attracting more cutting edge firms to the city. It also hopes to play a key part in encouraging more graduates to stay in the area after finishing courses at the city and county’s three universities.

The cluster includes the long established National Space Centre, already playing a key role in encouraging the next generation of engineers as well as the £100 million Space Park Leicester which opened a year ago.

 The University of Leicester-backed Space Park specialises in companies that process satellite data and which develop new technology, and has already attracted 20 tenants including Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Hewlett Packard, Amazon and Thales Alenia.

Smaller companies based there are working on everything from satellite mobile phone communications to mapping tiny bits of space debris in orbit around the world and monitoring air pollution on local, regional and global scales.

The Space Park is forecast to contribute £750 million per year to the UK space sector over the next decade. It is also anticipated it will support more than 2,500 direct and indirect jobs in the East Midlands. Space City – part of a wider Loughborough and Leicester Science and Innovation Enterprise Zone – also takes in Leicester City Council’s Dock and Dock workspaces which are home to some 40 smaller high tech, low carbon businesses employing around 400 people.

Future plans will include Dock 3, made up of three more buildings on nearby land, and another Leicester City Council industrial and business incubator which will be called Abbey Court. Meanwhile, management at Space Park Leicester are in talks with potential investors about phase three of its plans – a manufacturing base for small-scale satellite production.

The plans which are being promoted to an international audience at this week’s global MIPIM real estate conference in Cannes build on 60 years of involvement in the space sector at the University of Leicester, which currently has 10 instruments either in space or heading up there in the coming months.

Will Wells, the university’s commercial director, say the launch of Space City Leicester would do even more to put Leicester on the map.

He said: “This is about ambition. Media City has been transformative for Salford so why shouldn’t we occupy a similar space here in Leicester.

The East Midlands has always under-performed badly for foreign investment, but one of the headline features of what’s happened in the last few years is that we have turned the dial for international companies.

We hope to build a satellite facility at the Space Park, but it is early days. There’s a big opportunity to make volumes of small satellites in the UK and we’re working principally with the private sector to bring forward a business model.”

He added: “It’s very much part of our ambition and we would like to think we would have something concrete in the next two to two-and-a-half years. We’ve got a third of the Space Park site still available to develop and an existing community of companies based here.

A lot of people don’t realise that there are currently only around 3-4,000 satellites in orbit. That figure is set to grow exponentially around things like earth monitoring and communications so there are big growth opportunities.

The aspiration is for the UK to become a launch nation –from Cornwall and Scotland – for low earth orbit satellites. Investment in phase three of the Space Park would be in the tens of millions of pounds, and because it’s about advanced manufacturing, so job creation will be in the low hundreds.”

Leicester City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said further planned expansion within Space City Leicester would meet demand from businesses keen to locate here from the UK and overseas.

University of Leicester President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Nishan Canagarajah called the plans a “launchpad for an exciting new chapter in our city’s space history”.

He said: “From its beginnings 60 years ago at the University, we have grown space activity to unlock its huge potential to advance learning, to stimulate inward investment, innovation and growth and to address the challenging problems of our time.

Space City Leicester is exciting, it is bold and it is built upon a heritage of success. I would like to thank all our supporters, industrial partners, LLEP (Leicester and Leicestershire Economic Partnership) and the Leicester City Council for their steadfast commitment to this ambitious endeavor.”

LLEP co-chair Andy Reed OBE said: “Space City Leicester combines world-leading expertise with major assets such as Space Park Leicester and the National Space Centre to boldly build on what we have here in Leicester and Leicestershire.

It will create a world-leading cluster of research and development that will bring growth, investment, and many hundreds of jobs to our region.”