SCIENCE PARK BASE FOR TURING INSTITUTE?

The new owners of Alderley Park are aiming to raise a £40m equity fund to support new bioscience firms at the site, and are also seeking big ticket tenants such as the £42m Alan Turing Institute.

The 400-acre, 1.2 million sq ft research site is being vacated by drugs giant AstraZeneca as it moves to a new base in Cambridge, but at an event on Friday new owner Manchester Science Parks, and its majority shareholder Bruntwood, pledged to maintain the facility as a world class bioscience and research centre.

To do this MSP will need to attract and foster start-ups and smaller firms, and target big occupiers.

Dr Chris Doherty, AstraZeneca`s vice president of Alderley Park site options, said this list includes the Precision Medicine Catapult, a research centre backed by the Technology Strategy Board and designed to support businesses that will launch next year and be worth £200m over five years. It will also try and secure the Cell Therapy Manufacturing Centre – announced in the Budget by Chancellor George Osborne who has committed £55m.

Cheshire East council leader Michael Jones also told TheBusinessDesk.com that Alderley Park would bid for the Alan Turing Institute, another initiative announced in the Budget which will focus on big data and algorithm research. It would seek to help British companies by bringing together expertise in tackling problems requiring huge computational power but a location has not yet been decided and a tender will be issued this year. Alan Turing is the famous British mathematician who led codebreaking work during the second world war at Bletchley Park. After the war he joined the computing laboratory at Manchester University where he worked on the first computers.

Mr Jones said: “He was born in Wilmslow, why wouldn`t you put it here? But we`ve got to look at the national interest. What I`m saying is we want everything, but we want UK plc to be stronger and that`s a contradiction because you can`t have everything here.”

Cheshire East acquired 10% of Alderley Park and 3% of MSP in the deal which was said to be worth £30m-£50m. It has already been working already with AstraZeneca on space for early stage technology companies under the BioHub brand and on Friday Mr Jones said his cabinet will approve an undisclosed sum for the equity fund when it meets on Wednesday. Bruntwood/MSP have committed £5m along with AstraZeneca and more is expected from the Government and other investors. MSP`s chief executive Rowena Burns said the target was £40m.

Bruntwood`s chief executive Chris Oglesby said: “The level of our ambition for the future of the park will match the scale of the opportunity… Full spectrum bioscience research and development will remain at its core.”

But he was tight-lipped when asked about the potential for housing: “We are in the process of masterplanning the site. The key driver is world class bioscience, but there`s more to it than that. We`re consulting with the local community and working out the best mix for the site.”

Michael Jones said: “We`ve got to be open to enabling housing. We`re not in the process of destroying this beautiful site but we`ve got to be realistic.” AstraZeneca is leasing back the site until it has moved its research base in 2016. It will retain around 700 staff, down from 3,600, but these will be administrative roles. The group also has 2,000 employees at a factory in Macclesfield. Friday`s event, attended by the Chancellor who is also the local MP, was held amid a growing national debate about the proposed takeover of AstraZeneca by US rival Pfizer. He said the Government would, “support whatever arrangement best delivers that for Britain”.