Albert Gomez

Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre

The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) was established in 2014 to stimulate growth of the Industrial Biotechnology (IB) in Scotland. IBioIC is recognised as a European centre of excellence and connects world-leading industry with outstanding academic expertise and government to bring new IB processes and products to the global market. IBioIC is a key driver of Scotland's National Plan for Industrial Biotechnology, which recently set a new target of £1.2 billion in associated turnover and 4,000 direct employees by 2025 for the industry in Scotland. IBioIC facilitates collaboration, provides scale-up capabilities, creates networks and develops skills and training provisions. IBioIC has more than 140 industry members, over 70% of which are SME or micro companies. To date, IBioIC has provided support for more than 200 companies, across a range of collaborative innovation projects, fostering academic-business partnership and co-funded by business. A total investment of £6.4 million to date has leveraged an additional £28.5 million from businesses, follow-on funding from other sources or partnering with other funding initiatives. As a direct outcome from the collaborative projects funded alone, 327 high value green jobs have been protected or created by the businesses involved, leading to a further 3,000 jobs. IBioIC has supported 369 students through its skills and training partnerships across 18 Universities and research institutes and four Further Education Colleges in Scotland.