Science park ready to welcome new tenants

With two further businesses newly arrived, York Biotech Campus is keen to bring more firms to its 80-acre facility, estate manager Liz Cashon told Place Yorkshire.

Two deals were announced last month at YBC, in the shape of Microsaic Systems and Labskin, taking a combined 3,000 sq ft.

Origin story

York Biotech Campus has been around since the early 1990s, when the government decided it needed to spread out a  science base that was mostly clustered around Cambridge. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Fisheries, as was, decided that a greenfield site near York would be as Cambridge-adjacent as you’ll find in the North.

For a long time hence – and this is what a taxi driver may still need to hear, to get a fix on where to take you should you head to the campus from York station – the place went under the banner of Fera – the Food Environment Research Agency.

Fera Sciernce Ltd is still present at the site, but is now a private operation, albeit one 25% owned by what is now DEFRA – the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

Now, recognised as a biotech hub, YBC is home to a variety of organisations that span the sector from agri-tech, food biotechnology, environmental, medical, healthcare and diagnostics, including Abingdon Health, Cargill Bioindustrial and Labcorp.

If there’s an overall theme here, it is research, innovation and application.

The site welcomes regular conferences. Credit: via Aberfield

In its modern guise, the campus is home to entrepreneurs and start-ups through to scale-ups and established organisations who require, or might benefit from, such a specialised scientific environment.

In 2015, Fera was sold by the government to Capita. Around 50% of what the organisation does is still research for the government. The sell-on reflected what had been going on since the early 2000s, when the site started to be opened up to a mix of tenants who saw the appeal of co-location. And that’s where we are.

Other government departments still have a presence here: Public Health England, DEFRA, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, the National Bee Unit – there are 1m bees on site.

The challenge for YBC

The challenge now, as estate manager Liz Cashon explains, is to repurpose and redesign the estate for the future. The challenges that have arisen include dealing with separate service contracts in areas where plant is centralised. This is a power-intensive site.

Those moving to the site get to benefit from facilities including a 250-capacity auditorium and two seminar rooms each accommodating 50, at the Lakeside Conference Centre.

The facilities are available for businesses onsite to use, as well as external organisations such as North Yorkshire Council and the NHS.

The site is 80 acres, with 260,000 sq ft of lettable space, including CE rooms, wet lab space, open plan offices, meeting rooms, as well as an onsite restaurant and fitness centre.

The senior team has been strengthened at YBC this year, with head of campus Victoria de Kock coming on board in August.

Cashon told Place Yorkshire: “The site has really been opened up to a mix of tenants from the early 2000s, organisations who see the appeal of co-locating here: consultancy, testing, R&D, diagnostics.

“What we want to do now is to bring in even more organisations, and welcome them into our community, where they can benefit from being around like-minded organisations.

We’ve seen continued demand for lab space – we’ve had existing tenants convert warehouse space to more labs – and the majority of the remaining available space is office space. The message really is, if companies want to be in a science park community – we’ve got the space to accommodate them.”

Capita is now in control of the site. Credit: Place North

One of the success stories at the campus has been Abingdon Health, which won a series of contracts for Covid testing kits – an item very much in demand in 2020 and 2021 – which required a rapid expansion. A third of the former grain store on site was converted into a space including ‘clean rooms’ and other facilities. The firm manufactures, does diagnostics and R&D here.

Another success has been Labcorp, a US-headquartered drug development giant, which also has another facility in Harrogate, but needed a science park for further work: the firm chose York above competing science facilities.

Authenticity testing is another area: for example, not everything claimed by its promoters to be “manuka” honey actually qualifies as such: the real deal has antibacterial properties, and has become highly sought, and indeed highly priced.

Then there’s safety testing, on products such as baby milk, and people looking to the future, researching how to make protein-based products from insects. Developments in the pipeline include a saliva-based pregnancy test and ongoing work in cancer detection.

Another conversion project is currently under way, “and when we finish that at the end of this year, we’ll only have one bay of that building left” said Cashon. “The question is, do we build more, or convert more office space? There is room for expansion – the original buildings were designed to accommodate additions.”

There are partnerships with the University of Bradford and University of York St John’s, while the park works with the White Rose University Consotrium (Sheffield, Leeds and York). “We see ourselves as a natural grow-on space for companies that are growing out of university space where lab space might be limited,” said Cashon.

Deals struck at YBC

For now, Microsaic Systems and Labskin are the latest to join, although each is familiar with the campus through previous ownerships.

Microsaic Systems is a supplier in water purity monitoring, protection and control, working with water authorities globally to ensure water safety and quality. It has taken 1,350 sq ft, where it will produce detection bioreagents.

Skin science company Labskin has also moved into YBC, taking 1,800 sq ft across three labs. The business creates human skin equivalent models that are used by skincare, cosmetics, ingredient manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies as part of their research processes.

Labskin. Credit: via Aberfield

Bob Moore, chief executive at Microsaic, said: “We’re thrilled to be based here at YBC with our excellent team producing our bioreagents. YBC is an exceptional bio-cluster, and we’re surrounded by many other leading bioscience businesses who we can draw expertise from, as well as benefit from access to an abundance of skill and talent in the area.”

Cashon added: “Microsaic Systems and Labskin Limited are both leaders in their fields, playing crucial roles in our everyday lives.

“We are proud that they have chosen YBC as their base, adding to our diverse mix of innovative organisations already based here, and further bolstering Yorkshire’s reputation as a leading centre in bioscience.”