Leading the way

ALL smiles . . . Debbie Bridge (centre), the head of the University Campus Oldham, welcomes Dr Towns-Andrews and Mark Devall to the launch

Oldham’s high-tech businesses have welcomed the opening of a ground-breaking Enterprise and Innovation Centre and a Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in June of this year.

The £12million Innovation Centre will be home to a 100-plus companies across all business sectors in workplace sizes from large suites to hot desks.

A further 1,000 businesses will be associates through partnership working and a virtual presence. The £8million Centre for Innovative Manufacturing will be one of just nine centres of excellence in providing precision engineering and machining at atomic levels of accuracy.

Both centres are located on the riverside campus of the University of Huddersfield, taking advantage of business-academia links and collaboration. The project was revealed to an audience of more than 20 Oldham business people at University Campus Oldham.

Mark Devall, from Machine Tool Technologies, a partner company in the creation of the Centre for Innovative Manufacturing, said: “The university’s level of expertise in machine-tool engineering is pretty well unmatched in the UK.

“The new facility provides access to high-performance computing, rapid prototyping and a wide range of high technology equipment that is beyond the budget of small to medium-sized enterprises.”

The University’s director of research and enterprise, Dr Liz Towns-Andrews, said: “The Innovation Centre is an ecosystem to promote business growth. It is not just about renting space, it is the support network that makes this so different.

“The Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre where I worked until joining Huddersfield two years ago has about 900 businesses. I believe Innovation Avenue can have more than a 1,000 partnership businesses, with many of them coming from Oldham.

Email l.towns-andrews@hud.ac.uk for more details or contact Dr Towns-Andrews on 01484-473 169.