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GREEN ECONOMY SECTOR VIEW
By Ged Henderson
POWERING THE LOW CARBON REVOLUTION
An ambitious initiative to put Lancashire at the heart of the low carbon revolution is powering up its efforts to support the innovators driving the new green economy.
RedCAT is on a mission to deliver funding and support for developing technologies, accelerating their journey through capital investment at every stage – from R&D to demonstration, first sale and onto scale-up.
Investment is coming from a mix of public, private and venture capital and equity sources, all eager to put their money behind viable tech projects sourced and fully researched by RedCAT. The aim is for the not-for-profit venture to eventually operate on a national scale.
Closer to home, the ultimate vision for Lancashire is to see innovative low carbon products manufactured in the county and exported across the globe.
The first signs of the difference such an approach can make can now be seen. The Lancashire Centre for Alternative Technologies, to give RedCAT its full title, based at Clayton- le-Moors, is currently working to support and advise 20-plus SMEs.
It received a major boost last year when it was named as one of 10 ‘shovel ready’ projects in the county earmarked for a share of government Covid recovery cash. And it is working hard to ensure the £1.5m received from the ‘Getting Building Fund’ makes a real difference.
When it comes to
innovation you don’t have to invent new technologies
RedCAT’s support for Lancaster University- based Advanced Bacterial Sciences (ABS) has helped it secure a further £500,000 deal to add to its RedCAT investment, to enable it to commercialise the results of its research.
ABS creates, manufactures, and sells biological solutions for a range of real-world pollution and maintenance problems.
The funding has been provided by NPIF - Maven Equity Finance, which is managed by Maven Capital Partners and is a part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF).
The investment will enable ABS to commercialise its portfolio of products, sell directly to end users, as well as invest in continuous product development, patenting future technologies and scientific advances.
It will keep the business, and the jobs it is creating, in Lancashire, with the money enabling ABS to open a laboratory and office in Morecambe.
And on top of that ABS will create an innovation centre that will “co-locate other complementary start-ups and researchers” to carry out their innovation.
This centre of excellence will be an incubator to create specialist jobs for the area, reducing the ‘brain drain’ currently happening in local higher education institutes.
The ABS team already has several product lines harnessing bacterial solutions that address pressing environmental problems and cover
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