Nottingham Enterprise Zone opens new health and innovation centre

Posted on 21 November 2013 · Posted in News

MediCity, a new centre that will nurture the new generation of healthcare innovators, officially opened for business today at the Nottingham Enterprise Zone.

The centre is housed at the historic D6 building which has been refurbished to provide fully serviced office and laboratory space.  MediCity will offer a stimulating and supportive business development environment for innovators in consumer healthcare, medical technology, diagnostics and beauty products, as well as support for early stage businesses.

A partnership between Boots and BioCity, MediCity aims to become a new centre of excellence in health, beauty and wellness and will also offer a venue for conferences and events of eventually up to 1,000 delegates.

Communities Minister Baroness Stowell said:

“Medicity will be great news for Nottingham, creating a new space for businesses to grow and helping to boost local jobs and the city’s economy.

“This government is backing Nottingham and the Enterprise Zone because the vision is there to build on Beeston’s health heritage and make this a thriving place for business and innovation.”

Enterprise Zones are a long term investment to rebalance the economy, but they are already firmly laying down the foundations for their future success. Since they were launched in April 2012, the 24 Enterprise Zones have attracted 212 businesses, secured half a billion pounds of private sector investment and created over 4600 jobs.

Driving the UK’s science and pharmaceutical industry

Four Enterprise Zones are establishing the country’s newest centres of excellence for science and health innovation. With business incentives and manufacturers already on site, they will strengthen local skills, generate thousands of new local jobs and develop the medicines and treatments of the future. Already they have attracted 100 new businesses and generated 1,000 new local jobs:

  • Science Vale, Oxford: The biggest specialist community of scientists and technologists in the UK, home to leading facilities and research organisations. The Science and Technology Facilities Council, European Space Agency and Medical Research Council are based there.
  •  Sci-Tech Daresbury: A national science and innovation campus. It is an internationally-recognised location for technology businesses that fosters relationships between science, innovation and industry. Proveca are developing a ground-breaking range of new drugs for children with chronic medical conditions. There are also science–business collaborations with large corporations like IBM, Intel and Unilever.
  • D2N2, Nottingham: The UK’s centre for innovation in health, beauty and wellness in Nottingham. Major health businesses Boots, Reckittt Benckiser and Nordic Labs, put the Zone at the centre of a world-leading life science cluster.
  • Discovery Park: Europe’s leading science and technology park, with over 50 businesses on the former Pfizer site in Sandwich. World players such as Pfizer, LGC and Mylan to startups like Australian innovators in IVF, Genea Biomedx are based there.

For more information about Nottingham Enterprise Zone see http://www.nottinghamenterprisezone.co.uk/. To find out more about MediCity see http://www.biocity.co.uk/locations/medicity.