CAMPUS incubation centre that has successfully nurtured the commercial activities of start up companies, with some striking results, currently has wet lab and office space available for budding innovators.
University College Cork’s Business Innovation and Incubation Hub, which helped grow companies such as PrecisionBiotics, acquired last year by Danish biotech multinational Novozymes in a deal worth more than €80m, has space available at its GatewayUCC building following the departure of Altratech to facilitate its expansion.
Altratech, which is developing a novel technology to enable anyone, anywhere, to perform rapid and accurate genetic tests from any sample, started out with four people in the incubation hub in 2017 and now has 20 employees, said Myriam Cronin, head of GatewayUCC.
“They expanded beyond our capability so they have moved to a bigger facility, closer to the airport.”
She said a lot of the start-ups they deal with “start out as one or two-man operations and we take these embryonic companies and support them, embedding them close to our research centres, giving them access to a pool of research and business students, access to business support agencies, to seminars and workshops, all within a high quality campus environment”.
As well as supporting its own student and research innovators, the UCC programme also supports external entrepreneurs or “spin ins” (as opposed to “spin out” companies), such as global microbiome specialist Deerland Probiotics
and Enzymes, which is currently collaborating with UCC-based APC Microbiome Ireland on a maternity probiotic venture. Ms Cronin said a “unique selling point” for those interested in renting space at GatewayUCC is access to the university’s research centres and cutting edge technology, as well as access to finance via, eg, state agencies such as Enterprise Ireland or networks such as Venture Capital or Angel Investors, which links entrepreneurs with high-net worth individuals.
“So if you are out there looking for a wet lab or office space and you are interested in collaborating with some researchers — or you might be a spin out — we have support packages around all of that and we’d welcome discussions with people that may be interested in that,” Ms Cronin said.
The UCC package also includes access to its award winning SPRINT Accelerator and Business Development programmes. The SPRINT accelerator provides support to drive commercial success, accelerate route to market and ultimately create jobs from leading edge solutions developed by researchers in UCC.
Ms Cronin said they’ve put over 60 start-ups through their hub since 2010, resulting in more than 400 jobs to date, with some significant acquisitions along the way. They managed to stay open throughout the pandemic with reduced numbers, with 25 out of 80 incubator seats operational.
The hub has 1400 sq m of IT office and Wet Lab space, with own door office facilities. There are 21 incubation units ranging in size from 15m2 to 67m2, while the biggest office space is 52 sq m. There are also hot desks and four Bio-Incubation labs with separate write up offices.
Office rental cost is €250 per sq m pa and €280 per sq m pa for lab space. Tenants also have a car parking space, access to a boardroom, a conference room, smaller meeting rooms and the UCC Library and Mardyke sports facilities.
From more information,
email myriam.cronin@ucc.ie
