With AstraZeneca preparing to move to its new global headquarters in Cambridge, the new owners of Alderley Park has vowed to maintain its drive to attract world class science and technology companies to the Manchester campus.
The pharmaceutical giant’s 400-acre site, together with more than a million square feet of offices and laboratories, have now been acquired by Manchester Science Parks and its majority shareholder, the family-owned property company Bruntwood. And to continue the momentum the pair have said they intend to raise a £40m equity fund to attract and support new bioscience firms at the site.
Heading the Alderley Park hit list is the Government-backed Alan Turing Institute. Universities and technology clusters across Britain will soon be invited to bid for £42m to set up the institute, named after the computer pioneer and World War Two code-breaker who is memorialised in Sackville Park (pictured).
Announced in the Budget the five-year project will focus on big data and algorithm research and seek to help British companies by bringing together expertise in tackling problems requiring huge computational power. A final location has yet to be decided with a tender to be issued later this year. “Alan Turing was born in Wilmslow, so why shouldn’t we have his institute here?” asked Cheshire East council leader, Michael Jones.
Another potential target is the £55m Cell Therapy Manufacturing Centre. Having both facilities on the same site would make Alderley Park one of Europe’s leading bioscience locations.
The Cheshire East authority acquired 10 per cent of Alderley Park and three per cent of Manchester Science Parks in the deal rumoured to be worth as much as £50m. Jones confirmed his cabinet would approve an undisclosed sum for the equity fund by the end of the month. MSP and Bruntwood have jointly committed £5m and further donations are expected from the Government and other investors.
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, with full spectrum bioscience research and development remaining at its core.”
He remained cagey, however, about future housing plans for the one-time country estate. “We are in the process of master-planning the site,” Oglesby said. “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.”
AstraZeneca is leasing back the Alderley site until it has completed the moved to its new Cambridge research base in 2016. Until then it will retain around 700 staff, down from 3,600, but these will mainly be administrative posts.
Bruntwood has a history of developing innovative and technology-based sites and is the main player behind Manchester Science Parks. With the biggest of its four campuses situated next to Manchester’s universities and the biggest medical cluster in Europe, it provides offices, labs, virtual offices and hot desk facilities to more than 150 companies. The three other sites in the MSP network are Salford Innovation Park, One Central Park and Technopark.
