Inverness: Inverness Campus
Key Sectors: Industrial and manufacturing, Life sciences and biotech, Tourism and hospitality
OVERVIEW
Inverness Campus is an exceptionally high-quality environment for business, research and learning focussed on life sciences and technology. Owned by regional development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), the 215-acre site located on the east side of the city has been purpose-built as a collaborative centre to encourage innovation and joint working between commerce, academia and the NHS.
© HIE/ROAVR
Inverness Campus, just a 15-minute drive from the airport, provides good air links to key European hubs. There are excellent road links to Scotland’s major cities with the Campus being situated at the junction of two major trunk roads – the A9 from the south and A96 to the east. The site is also serviced by three bus stops that provide direct connections to the city centre including the main bus and train station within half an hour.
The campus is already home to 15 life science and technology businesses and a workplace for more than 900 people, offering quality office space and research labs. Scotland’s newest university, the University of the Highlands and Islands, has a base at the campus as does Scotland’s Rural College.
Two new developments – the National Treatment Centre (NTC) and the Life Sciences Innovation Centre (LSIC) – will open by early 2023, with state-of-the-art facilities for clinicians, life sciences companies and researchers.
The NTC will offer patients from across the north of Scotland elective care in ophthalmology and orthopaedics. More than 230 people will work at the centre that houses 24 single-occupancy rooms, 5 operating rooms and 13 consulting rooms, and around 170 additional jobs will be created. It will be capable of handling up to 1,800 in-patient orthopaedic procedures and 45,000 ophthalmic outpatient visits annually.
The LSIC has been developed by the university and HIE to provide both new research facilities and bespoke office, incubator and laboratory spaces for small businesses. It will accommodate university research on medical nanotechnology and active health, and comprise an innovation suite for product design and testing, as well as shared spaces such as the ‘knowledge exchange suite’ to facilitate collaboration between the researchers and entrepreneurs. The NTC and LSIC will integrate clinical care for patients with academic healthcare research and the creation of new commercial opportunities, products and services in technology and life sciences.
© SRUC/Threesixty Architecture
The Rural and Veterinary Innovation Centre (RVIC) development led by Scotland’s Rural College is due to start construction in Q1 2022. The RVIC will create and support the development of new and existing small to medium-sized businesses to grow jobs and the economy. It will feature seven spaces and breakout areas for new bioscience start-up businesses, along with a necropsy suite for wildlife and laboratory spaces to support the development of new products and services and industry-focussed research.
More than £135m has been invested at the site so far. Outline planning permission is in place for 55,000m² of development with some 7,000m² remaining in the first phase of development.
KEY MESSAGES
- Inverness Campus offers the opportunity to co-locate with Scotland’s newest tertiary university, alongside other higher education institutions and research organisations.
- Joint working with and access to the NHS is simplified by co-location.
- Inverness Campus houses a vibrant and growing commercial life sciences community. It is adjacent to a research-friendly teaching hospital.
- Inverness takes full advantage of its relatively small size (population circa 60,000) to serve as a focused administrative hub for a very large hinterland.
- The infrastructure for the first phase of the site was completed in 2015, providing 17 fully serviced plots of varying sizes of which 3 remain. Master-planning for future phases is underway.
- Inverness is a fast-growing city with a skilled, motivated workforce.
- Inverness Campus is renowned for its ethos of collaboration and open innovation, and relates to UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 (Good health and well-being), 8 (Decent work and economic growth) and 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure).
QUICK FACTS
Six plots with Life Science enterprise area status
Over 6,500 students
Two research institutions
Clinical Research facility
Two purpose built collaborative centres
X
Linkedin