WORLD-leading researchers and entrepreneurs in Scotland yesterday received a funding boost of more than £112 million to help them create the technologies of the future.
Chancellor Philip Hammond announced £96m at the University of Strathclyde’s Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire.
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He said he wanted to expand “catapult centres” which support work in high-tech labs, cutting-edge factories and advanced training centres and which have helped create hundreds of new products, services and inventions.
They include a portable pollution sensor that parents can attach to a child’s buggy, cellular therapies to fight cancer and improve recovery of stroke victims, LED treatment for blindness and more efficient aircraft wings.
“Today’s £96m investment for Scotland will support innovators across the country to create the technologies of the future and the better, highly-paid jobs we all want to see,” said Hammond.
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The AFRC also secured £16.5m to establish a new advanced engineering facility to put Scotland at the forefront of work to transform one of the manufacturing sector’s most important supply chains.
FutureForge is expected to revolutionise the hot forging sector worldwide when it starts operating in 2020 as the world’s most advanced hot forging research platform. It is expected to help generate £40m of new R&D projects over 10 years and create more than 30 new jobs.
Strathclyde’s principal, professor Sir Jim McDonald, said: “This new facility will be a real asset for the AFRC and its business partners, bolstering its already impressive capabilities and enabling further research collaborations to produce tangible impact for industry.
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“It demonstrates Strathclyde’s commitment to working together with industry on research, development and innovation and making Scotland a leading centre of manufacturing excellence.”
Executive chair of the AFRC, professor Keith Ridgway, said it was an exciting time advanced engineering in Scotland: “This is the third big announcement in the past year and the country’s reputation as being the go-to place for the development of the next generation of manufacturing technologies is strengthening.
“This project really will help secure the future of an industry that is vitally important to the wider manufacturing sector across the globe.”
Linda Hanna, Scottish Enterprise strategy and sectors chief, added: “Scotland is already leading the way across the UK in metal forming research, manufacturing technology and innovation. This investment, however, will develop a unique forging capability, not available anywhere else in the world.”
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