GLOBAL BRITAIN, SCIENCE SUPER POWER DINNER

Jun 30th, 2022
HARWELL CAMPUS, OXFORD

The Venue

The Harwell site has grown to become the leading showcase of an advanced cluster, housing the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and Diamond Light Source on the government-owned part of the site, alongside rapidly-growing private investment in research and manufacturing facilities on the adjoining campus. I have watched this growth over the past 15 years under different ownerships. Now under the new ownership of Brookfield, one of the largest property and investment firms in the world, their plans are to expand it faster still. We held our talks in the brand-new Quad 2 building where no tenant had yet set foot, while the dinner took place in a marquee on the beautiful, newly-landscaped area outside. The sun shone down on us, and all was well in Harwell.

AIM OF THE EVENING

As Harwell is such an important site for science and technology, which has attracted in recent years a number of large companies to establish facilities there – many of these with headquarters overseas – it seemed natural to promote the dinner as an example – probably the best example – of “Global Britain, a Science Super Power”. Certainly, this did not escape the notice of Dominic Cummings during his poorly-received period as an adviser to Government. Perhaps he would have been enthralled. The talks below illustrated the theme very well, and say it all.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Andrew Mitchell, Director-General at Department of Industry and Trade
• Anita Bernie, Managing Director, MDA Space UK
• Geoff Winkett, Vice-President, Molecular Spectroscopy, Agilent Inc

SUPER CLUSTER SPEAKERS

• Abdelazziz Toumi, V-P, Head of mRNA Business & New Ventures, Catalent Bio Inc
• Anotonio Guida, Director, Radioactive Waste Management & Disposal, Jacobs plc
• Jason Forshaw, Head of Future Business (Europe), Astroscale Inc

HARWELL’S VISION & FUTURE

Harwell is a 700-acre site now home to over 200 organisations and around 6,000 personnel. Split across three main sectors – life sciences, energy and space – with 3 million square feet of development planned. In 2020, Brookfield Asset Management secured a 50% share in the Harwell Campus, including a pipeline of purpose-built real estate offerings, that provide opportunities to scale at pace.

A particular attraction for investors is the unique ecosystem of national anchor facilities, including established assets like the UK’s synchrotron Diamond Light Source , the UK Space Agency and others being built, including the National Quantum Computing Centre) combined with a burgeoning number of private research institutions and companies (from start-ups to multinationals) enabling a strong culture of cross-sector collaboration.

Improving connectivity, where technology designed for one sector helps inspire breakthroughs in another, is the objective behind the formation of sub-clusters that Harwell has established. For example, X-ray capability developed for space has been used to improve cancer detection rates in healthcare.

Advanced Research Clusters ltd (ARC)

Stuart Grant, CEO of the Harwell Campus and ARC (pictured), provided an overview of ARC’s wider plans.

ARC comprises four sites: Harwell, Arlington, Uxbridge and Hammersmith. With the backing of Brookfield it gives ARC the financial backing to tackle projects of significant scale, and to ensure that every project is delivered to the highest possible standard.

The mission is to provide the best working environments for co-working, cleanrooms, accelerator labs, and open access R&D facilities.

ARC’s portfolio consists of 1.6 million square feet of existing assets and 5 million square feet of development potential across the Golden Triangle. It has plans for further growth across the UK and Europe and is in active discussions on several potential new sites.

SELF-INTRO SECTION

We began by introducing examples of the larger companies that have significant investment on the Campus, and followed with breakthrough companies which are illustrative of the leading research being done in and around the Campus area.

LARGER COMPANIES

ANTONIO GUIDA, JACOBS PLC

Jacobs is a global Technical Professional Services firm employing 55,000 people, with its main centres in the US and the UK. Clients are government agencies and other large firms and organisations, but also SMEs who can use their specialist services.

Antonio is Operations Director at Jacobs Nuclear and in this capacity spends a significant proportion of his time at the Harwell office. This area of the business has 60+ years of experience across the nuclear asset lifecycle and beyond, and employs approximately 5000 professionals, half of which are in the UK or led by the UK.

The Harwell site is the largest suite of independent nuclear labs in the UK. An example is their Materials and Components Irradiation facility (also used for space research). They have also developed specialist software over several decades – and set the standard for specific areas within the national and international Nuclear Industry.

He pointed out the powerful nuclear heritage at Harwell, dating to the construction of the first reactor in Western Europe. Latterly Harwell has attracted other important industries making it an even more valuable location for Jacobs. For example, a growing number of Space Industry stakeholder where, for example, Jacobs is prime contractor for NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program. Jacobs also launched its own satellite in 2021, “Jacobs Mango One”. The location of the UK’s Nuclear Fusion centre of activity at Culham, close by, is an additional benefit. As Antonio said, “Jacobs is here to stay and grow”.

ABDELAZZIZ TOUMI, CATALENT BIOLOGICS

Abdel began by explaining the pharma industry is estimated to spend more than $160bn on drugs manufacturing, of which more than 35% is outsourced to contract and development manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), like Catalent.

Catalent is one of the largest CDMOs, headquartered in New Jersey USA, with 50 facilities around the world, employing more than 19,000 people. It offers end-to-end manufacturing services enabling pharmaceutical companies to provide patient-fast access to medicines needed. Large companies like Astra Zeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson among others partner with them. However, there is a global trend towards small (and virtual) biotech companies that form the innovative engine of the industry and who need a partner like Catalent with the right manufacturing expertise and capacities. This makes a UK location of particular importance to the company.

One reason companies value these services is that Catalent can offer mammalian cell-line GPEx, direct-to-patient clinical supply, FlexDirect, and Smartag Technology for antibody drug conjugates. The company has a growing R&D-pipeline which includes the emergence of new and more complex modalities such as mRNA, advanced cell and gene-therapies, and multi-specific proteins.

The company recently acquired VMIC (Virtual Manufacturing Innovation Centre) which was established with public monies, and is now under construction on the Harwell Campus. The VMIC will become Catalent’s mRNA and Drug Substance centre of excellence in Europe with hundreds of jobs planned. It expects that the Harwell Campus will serve it as a valuable engine of growth for its life-science activity.

JASON FORSHAW, ASTROSCALE

Jason is Head of Future Business at Astroscale UK (ASUK). The company’s vision is to clean up space and service satellites to extend their operational life. In the UK their focus is on removing old, defunct constellation satellites (which are estimated to number around 2,600) and present hazards to operational spacecraft – a significant issue now that the world relies on so heavily on global communication networks, GPS, internet, weather monitoring, financial transactions, disaster recovery, to name some.

The company has been based In the UK for four years. During this time it has been working with OneWeb on the “ESA Sunrise” programme to remove failed constellation satellites. It recently announced it had received £15M of funding from the UKSA to proceed with satellite design and manufacturing.

At the UKSA CEO’s breakfast last year (which took place at the IAC Conference in Dubai) Astroscale’s founder, Dr Nobu Okada, highlighted the key reasons which brought him to set up an office in the UK, notably: the growing licensing and regulatory regime – especially the UKSA’s stance in supporting the space sustainability agenda; space insurance provision in London; and the growth of key networks, such as Harwell, that foster innovation and attract highly-skilled labour.

Since 2017, ASUK has grown to over 100 staff, and globally to over 300 staff, and raised $300M in investment. It is now one of the largest commercial space companies on the Harwell Campus, and now its largest international centre, which includes the Japan HQ, USA, and Israel. Four years ago, it occupied a single office in the Harwell Innovation Centre. Shortly, it will move into a new building, Zeus, where it will have capacity for 150+ people, with inclusion of clean rooms for satellite manufacturing.

Harwell is now home to the National IOSM Control Centre (In-Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing), which Astroscale developed together with the Catapult, RHEA, GMV and CGI. From here it operates its ELSA-d mission, one of the first in the world demonstrating key debris removal capabilities in space. It co-founded the IOSM working group with the Satellite Applications Catapult in Harwell which is now the primary industry group for IOS and it has become part of the UKSpace Industry Association.

As a satellite manufacturer, its supply chain is very UK-focused, including companies on the Harwell Campus, such as MDA Space and Thales Alenia Space. This has been enabled by having a core campus where many of the UK space companies have either main or site offices.

Recently Astroscale has welcomed a new MD to lead their UK operation, Nick Shave, who is Chair of UKSpace and a former VP of Strategic Programs at Inmarsat. The company is also looking to develop their venture capital investor portfolio in the UK and to work with their international offices and partners across Europe, Asia, Middle East and North America.

BREAKTHROUGH COMPANIES

HOLT WONG, QDOT TECHNOLOGY LTD

Holt is Co-Founder and COO of Qdot Technology Ltd, an Oxford University spin-out on the Harwell Campus, leveraging thermal management expertise to create electric and hybrid propulsions systems.

Specifically, Qdot has developed thermal managements systems for high-power density batteries and compact heat exchangers using advanced design and manufacturing methods. It is combining these in a battery-powered, integrated propulsion system that will demonstrate a compact, lightweight and high-thrust- solution for electric and hybrid aircraft, both conventional and VTOL.

It has just completed a successful seed funding round and is now conducting scaled testing of its propulsion system components. The aim is to complete a full propulsion system test next summer for a 500kW powertrain.

Holt’s outreach to the guests is they are seeking a heavyweight drone test platform to perform flight testing and would be interested in speaking to anyone developing heavyweight drones or light passenger aircraft.

MARCO MORELLI, SI HEALTH LTD

siHealth was founded in 2014 by an Italian aerospace group (Flyby, based in Livorno – Italy) to combine space-related technology, photonics, big data and AI for health-related applications. The company only really started operating once Marco, who serves as CTO, relocated to the UK, becoming “employee zero” at the company (in a room in the Atlas Building at Harwell Campus). Since then, it has grown fast, now employing 18 people, and supported in particular by investment from BASF in 2019.

It has also benefited from interaction with organisations on the Harwell Campus, such as a collaboration with Public Health England (radiation related activity takes place on Harwell) and the European Space Agency, which has its UK HQ on Harwell. With ESA several satellite-based applications for sun protection & vitamin D and for daylight-based skin cancer therapy

The company uses satellite data, Artificial Intelligence techniques and smart diagnostics to support various kinds of disease prevention & treatment, particularly in relation to sun exposure, thus having the opportunity to interact with many of the companies on the Campus. Its main products are: a digital solution for the telemedicine of skin cancer using home-based daylight therapy (“SmartPDT”); a new poroduct is a mobile app for preventing sunburn and making sure to get enough vitamin D from sunlight in a personalised way (“Sun4Health”), which is going to be launched at the EADV Dermatology Congress in September 2022.

DANIEL KAUTE, EVORALIS LTD

Daniel joined the company as CEO recently, where he is based in Oxford, but the company’s technology was spun out from Cambridge University. He began by setting out the imperative of solving the plastic pollution problem. For example, only 9% of plastic is recycled, and of that 98% is downcycled into inferior products. It is therefore not only an environmental problem but a wasted resource.

Evoralis has developed a solution based on enzymatic recycling, which means directly reducing plastics to monomers that can be recycled back into plastics as new, so that they are not distinguishable from new plastic. It took 10 years for the first and only enzyme developed for monomising PET to be industrialised. Evoralis claims it can speed up the discovery process by a factor of1000 times, so that instead of 5 to 10 years of development time it can be counted in months. As an outreach to the guests, Daniel mentioned the company is currently looking for seed funding – interest or introductions welcome.

BORIS GRAGERA, INITITION ENERGY LTD

Inition based on the Harwell Campus is creating what it calls the next generation of battery electrodes. According to the company it takes 80 times more energy to make a battery compared to the energy stored. As battery manufacturers are now building gigafactories to meet just 4% of total automotive demand now, what will be the impact he asks when they need to produce for a 20% share of the market?

Boris has been working in the field of batteries for ten years, looking for a solution to this problem. He discovered a South Korean battery maker and a South Korean inventor (now the CTO of the company who is currently based in USA) who together have developed an improved method of manufacture which reduces the cost of the electrode and the amount of space required to manufacture batteries. The company is supplying its electrodes in battery packs which are sold to military agencies in several countries, including the USA, UK and Europe.

The choice of the UK, and Harwell, for the company’s location was due to the compelling strategic road map laid out by the Faraday Institute. In his view, there is nowhere in Europe (outside perhaps Germany) which has an equivalent R&D road map, with the funding support and eco system to back it up. He now has five people based as the Harwell office with another three due to be added.

GRAHAM EVES, HAYDALE GRAPHENE PLC

Graham is on the board of Haydale, an AIM-listed nanomaterials company. He is also an adviser and investor in several other high-value innovation HardTech companies. For this talk he described how he had helped Haydale and a new start-up Viritech Ltd to work together to develop an ultra-low weight hydrogen tank using graphene.

Haydale uses a patented plasma reactor process to functionalise nanomaterials like graphene, thereby optimising the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of the material. A property of graphene is that it is totally impermeable to hydrogen. With this in mind Haydale has developed a graphene composite material for high pressure, light weight hydrogen storage which Viritech has deployed in its first hydrogen power train solution.

Viritech was founded in February 2021 to develop hydrogen powertrain systems to license to manufacturers in the automotive, aerospace and marine industries as well as for storage & distribution. Viritech and Haydale are now collaborating on developing Type 5 (700 Bar) storage that also takes advantage of graphene/epoxy’s structural strength.

Viritech launched its “Apricale Hypercar” after only 18 months of development, based on a Porsche mule, which it demonstrated a few days earlier at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The company already has an order from Pininfarina (Italian based, Indian owned) to build 25 Apricales. Weighing less than 1000Kg and with an engine able to deliver 1000hp, it is in a world-leading class. As a collaboration it shows what can be achieved by British materials scientists and engineers working together.

CHARLES KEEN, BACALL ALUMINIUM LTD

Charles began by explaining that the UK has 20 large industrial plants that use aluminium sheet, making cars, trains, planes, and cans. All of this sheet is imported, while at the same time the UK exports the same amount of aluminium as scrap. This double negative led to Charles’s operating business, Keen Ltd, forming an industry-wide consortium (The British Aluminium Consortium for Advanced Alloys: BACALL) to undo this obvious threat, which recent global events have shown to be acute.

After several years trying to engage with the large aluminium companies, three of the world’s largest clients of the material sponsored the consortium to undertake a feasibility study, which was supported last year by Innovate UK. As a result, the consortium members are now moving to implement these plans, committing demand, forming the BACALL company and a second capital raise is underway, following the recent commitment to fund the three-year build programme. This is to be a wholly UK focused circular economy business – taking UK used material and recycling this back for UK plants, into sheet with ultra-low embedded carbon.

The project is still “under the radar” but as Charles says, this will be one of the most important changes in UK metals industry in a generation. The Bessemer Society has been very happy to follow and support the progress since the beginning.

ILANA WISBY, OXFORD QUANTUM COMPUTERS LTD

Ilana is the founding CEO of OQC, a spinout from the University of Oxford, built on the work Dr Peter Leek’s laboratory. It has a three-dimensional architecture so that it is able to scale without any compromise on quality, which the company claims is unique in the world of quantum computers. It offers its platform as a Quantum Computing-as-a-Service (QCaaS) business in the UK or Europe. The power of its processing capability gives customers and partners the ability to improve how they operate, for example: modelling processes, or AI algorithms which enables them to make ground-breaking discoveries.

Ilana couldn’t reveal it at the dinner, but a few days later the company announced it had raised £38 million in the first close of an ongoing Series A funding round. This is the UK’s largest ever Series A in quantum computing. The funding follows the February 2022 launch of OQC’s latest system, Lucy, on Amazon’s quantum computing service, Amazon Braket.

TIM KRUGER, ORIGEN CARBON SOLUTIONS LTD

Tim is CEO of Origen Carbon Solutions whose ‘zero-carbon lime’ technology can be used to remove carbon dioxide either from flue gas or from ambient air. This helps to offset emissions from dispersed sources permanently, such as aviation and agriculture. The importance of such technology is that it complements the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by removing equivalent amounts of any remaining emissions from the air. It can therefore significantly reduce emissions from energy-intensive industries like cement and steel.

A pilot plant capable of producing 3000 t/yr of zero-carbon lime is in the process of being commissioned in North Lincolnshire and will be operational in Q3 2022.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

GEOFF WINKETT, AGILENT INC

Geoff is the General Manager and Vice President of Agilent Technologies Molecular Spectroscopy. Agilent is a US company which was spun out from Hewlett-Packard in 1999 as an independent company. Geoff have been with the company since the H-P days with experience of working in the UK, US and Australia.

The Molecular Spectroscopy business is focussed on providing scientific equipment solutions to markets such as, Pharma/BioPharma; General laboratory such as environmental/advanced materials; and Field detection including Aviation security. The global headquarters of their Raman Spectroscopy business became located on the Harwell Campus after they acquired the Raman business of an RAL spinout, Cobalt Light Ltd, in 2017.

Since then, the company has grown by over 40% employing over 100 people on the Harwell site, making it Agilent’s largest site in the UK. It has also made significant investment, including a purpose-fit building to house R&D, marketing, manufacturing, New Product Innovation, and sales.

The Harwell site will continue to be one of Agilent‘s key locations, and the decision to acquire Cobalt, he said, has been “fantastic with business tripling since the acquisition”, adding, “it is a perfect example of Global Britain”.

The Benefits for Agilent of the Harwell Business Location

1. Many of the technologies and competencies in Agilent’s business – such as optics, laser, data science etc – are also utilized by many other organizations across the Harwell site. Being co-located offers the Agilent team the opportunity to have these linkages that helps us expand their business. There is already a strong relationship with the Rutherford Labs as well, which they are keen to continue to expand going forward (Cobalt was a spinout of RAL).
2. Some of their brightest engineers, chemists, physicists, marketers are located at the Harwell office. They stack up extremely well relative to any other of Agilent’s locations worldwide , and offer a level of affordability that is simply not available in the US bay area for example. Access to high quality employees is fundamental to the success of driving the business forward faster.
3. The vicinity to key customers, of which many are located in the UK & Europe, is critical not just in terms of sales, but in terms of the early engagement as part of the R&D cycle to ensure new products under development meet the mark.
4. The close vicinity to outstanding academic & research organizations as a source of collaboration and thought leadership.
5. The ability to connect and partner with the investment community in the UK to assess potential partnerships with early stage start up organizations, and also more mature companies looking to take the next stage.

Geoff concluded that there is no other location that provides all the advantages outlined above. Thus, these are the powerful enablers for his future growth plans for the business. Hence he has “no doubt that I will increase my investment in this location…both in terms of people and capital and very much look forward to this Global Britain initiative continuing to facilitate these expansion plans.”

ANITA BERNIE, MDA SPACE UK

Anita was appointed to the role of Managing Director of MDA Space and Robotics Limited three months earlier. She explained how she has always been excited by the space industry, having graduated with an Aerospace Engineering degree in 1994. Her career since has allowed her to work for a diverse range of space organisations including internationally. She now has the opportunity to configure MDA Space to play a growing role in supporting the UK’s space ambitions.

MDA Space is a Canadian company, like Brookfield (the new owners of the Harwell campus) – and like Brookfield they recognise the benefits of investing in “Global Britain”. It helps too that the UK and Canada are close allies who work together on many bilateral and international initiatives, such as the G7, the G20, NATO, and the Commonwealth. With regard to Space specifically, the two countries are working more closely than ever she said, strengthening ties between their space communities, academic institutions and public agencies.

In October last year, the UK Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency signed a Memorandum of Understanding, committing to working together to enhance bilateral cooperation opportunities. This will further enable collaboration on using space in such vital areas as studying the Earth to help fight climate change, and using satellites for navigation and location purposes. It also sets a framework for future collaboration on space science and exploration.

MDA Space was established over 50 years ago. It employs more 2,500 people in three business areas: Robotics and Space Operations, Geo-intelligence, and Satellite Systems. In the UK it employs over 40 highly-skilled staff on the Harwell Campus, designing and manufacturing critical systems that will support many of the upcoming lunar missions as well as in-orbit servicing missions. With the support of the UK Space Agency and the European Space agency they are in the process of moving from the Research and Development phases through to commercial products that will be a source of export sales to international space customers.

There is even greater focus and interest in space now in the UK where Government has recognised their role in enabling vital communications, navigation, security, monitoring, and forecasting. The ambitions set out in the UK’s Integrated Review, the National Space Strategy and the Defence Space Strategy all recognise the role space plays in the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure.

The UK also has one of the most entrepreneurial environments in the world, which is an ideal environment for MDA to support and grow further. An essential part of working in an eco-system is successful collaboration and teamwork. An example of the benefits of its location on the Harwell Campus is its partnership with Astroscale, one of the companies that is leading the way in space sustainability (removing space debris for example). Another is its work with Oxford University to develop a Compact Scanning LIDAR for space applications.

At Harwell there are over 100 space companies across the value chain. These are underpinned by the critical mass created by the presence on the site of the STFC, RAL, the European Space Agency, the Satellite Applications Catapult and other organisations.

The alignment of Harwell’s vision to be a leading inter-disciplinary cluster is providing ideal conditions for MDA to grow its presence in the UK. The aim is to evolve its UK business to be complementary to its Canadian parent by focusing on growth areas like low-cost, commercial, newspace satellite operators and users. Having increased headcount rapidly over the last two years it will soon be moving into new purpose-built facilities in the “BEP0 building” nearby, where it will have office space, cleanrooms and a robotics development lab.

ANDREW MITCHELL, DIT

Andrew gave examples of the strength of Science and Technology in the UK, such as the recent plans announced by Moderna to establish a new R&D centre to develop cutting edge vaccines for a range of respiratory diseases. He also mentioned the recent announcement of the new Innovation Centre focused on 5G/6G satellite innovation at Harwell.

He then provided interesting insights to how science and technology occupies a top position on the Government’s agenda (of course, since the resignation of the PM so soon after Andrew’s talk, “Government” has now to be qualified). It was in June 2021 that the Prime Minister set out the ambition for the UK to become a “science and technology superpower”. The PM also established the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), which he chaired to back up that ambition. It is supported by the Office for Science and Technology Strategy, housed in the Cabinet Office [Alex: which is important to understand for lobbying purposes].

The reasoning is that as a science and technology superpower the UK is better able to deal with the “economic headwinds, geopolitical challenges and inflation”. It will also help drive new market opportunities in areas such as clean growth and automotive, which will follow the likes of Life Sciences. It will also deliver “strategic advantage” in key technologies such as AI, Quantum and Cyber.

All this has to be set in the context of an increasingly competitive global landscape, which requires both a sense of urgency, and to focus on areas where the UK can “realistically build, leading capability, and be willing to take hard choices”.

The NSTC has set out four areas of direction:

1. Sustainable environment – to deliver net zero ambitions
2. Health and Life Sciences – to create an ecosystem for creating world beating companies, which also delivers better outcomes for citizens
3. National security and defence – to strengthen capabilities to protect the UK’s interests
4. A digital and data driven economy – to generate productivity through the creation and adoption of digital technologies

Two major pieces of Government thinking and direction will be announced:

1. The International Technology Strategy, which will set out the goals and vision for how to shape and build a new global technology system.
2. Later in the year the NSTC will publish the actions needed to deliver on the ambitions set by the Prime Minister.

All of these are described as “long term workstreams” which will help steer and cohere Government activity across Departments and the broader ecosystem recognising that to realise the opportunities will not be possible without a coherent and joined up Government, acting as one. It also requires as well longevity and stability to invest in future skills and digital infrastructure. [Alex: long-term and joined up thinking are both of great importance to Bessemer members so welcomed].

The Department for International Trade was created to take advantage of the opportunities of trading as an independent nation. Here the aim is to deepen relationships with like-minded countries. The Free Trade Agreement signed with Australia is an example. It includes the world’s first dedicated innovation chapter – promoting co-operation in areas such as Artificial Intelligence and net zero. There is also the UK-Australia Space Bridge which is backed up by the UK’s Space Export Academy.

Last year the UK signed a Digital Economy Agreement with Singapore, which not only looks to deepen ties in technologies including LawTech and Artificial Intelligence but to address systemic challenges such as cross border data flows, open government information and online safety.

By the end of this year the UK hopes to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement which sets rules for digital trade across the economy. Joining will support UK businesses of all sizes to seek new opportunities in CPTPP markets.

Despite its many strengths, the UK must work hard to compete on the global stage. The DIT recently launched its Export Strategy, “Made in the UK, sold to the World”, in which it highlighted the opportunities for science, technology and innovation-led sectors. As part of this aspiration work is now going on across the DIT to identify opportunities in areas such as cyber security, digital innovation, and emerging technologies.

UK Export Finance is supporting the UK’s net zero ambitions which are often capital-intensive. It is offering to provide 80% guarantees on loans of £25 million. It also offers green economy exporters access to increased lending capacity.

In conjunction with DIT, the Office for Investment is providing a single point of contact for the largest and most significant investment projects, such as the investment announced by Smith & Nephew of a £100m investment into Hull to build a new advanced wound management R&D and manufacturing facility.

The message from Government is that Science and Technology is a key driver of prosperity via productivity gains and economic growth. As a Department the DIT is here to help.

MEMORIES

NETWORKING BEFORE TALKS

TALKS BEFORE DINNER

DRINKS AFTER TALKS

INTO THE MARQUEE FOR DINNER

START OF DINNER UNDERWAY

HIGH LEVEL NETWORKING AT THE TABLES

MAKING AN ANIMATED POINT

MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

OXFORD ANNUAL SPONSORS

Alex Stewart
Founder and Convenor
July 15, 2022