ABOUT

As one of Europe’s leading Science Parks, the University of Warwick Science Park offers a unique package of property and business services to provide an environment in which innovative and knowledge based companies can grow. Located 3 miles to the south east of Coventry, it provides excellent access to the M1/M6/M42 motorways, is 15 minutes from Birmingham International Airport and less than an hour from the centre of London by train.

Since opening its first building in 1984, additional investment and development has resulted in over 50,000 square metres of dedicated space for companies at all stages of growth. Today Warwick Science Park has 20 buildings on its 42 acre main site, in addition to three satellite incubators, providing the base for 140 companies employing circa 2,100 people.

Augmenting the provision of quality space is the availability of dedicated business support. For 20 years Warwick Science Park has had an in-house team able to provide companies with support and advice in the three areas of Access to Finance,Assess to Markets and Access to Skills. These have been achieved through a range of initiatives over the years, such as the provision of Access to Finance services for the Warwickshire Rural Growth Network.

Warwick Science Park is close to a significant cluster of ICT, creative and gamining companies which is reflected in a high number of tenants form this sector on the Park.  Building on the growth and increased R&D in the automotive sector an increased number of automotive design intensive companies setting up on the Science Park to serve local automotive companies such as Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin..

Land and Property

The University of Warwick Science Park has a mix of properties ranging from The Venture Centre with short-term rentals for units from 25 to 150 square metres, several multi-occupancy buildings offering 200 square metres to 1,000 square metres, through to its latest and largest building, Riley Court offering 3,700 square metres. Across the Science Park and its Innovation Centre there are altogether 17 incubation offices from10 to 18 square meters to accomodate knowledge based and innovation led startups.

At Warwick Technology Park the Science Park has a joint venture Innovation Centre with Warwickshire County Council. Units range from 20 to 150 square metres and are equipped with raised floors suitable for ICT-based companies. Leases are short-term to reflect the needs of expanding technology-based SMEs.

On Binley Business Park, on the east side of Coventry, the Science Park has a second joint venture Innovation Centre, with Coventry City Council and the Chamber of Commerce, providing units from 20 to 150 square metres. Again these units are available on short-term leases for growing companies.

Blythe Valley Innovation Centre is a site managed by the University of Warwick Science Park on behalf of Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council. The building is specifically designed to meet the requirements of ICT companies with units ranging from 25 to 100 square metres on short-term leases or licences.

Facilities

Free car parking, full time reception, wide range of telephony services, hi-speed internet, wireless access points, meeting rooms, photocopying and mail franking are provided at all sites.

Virtual Tenancy – Warwick Science Park offers three levels of service to cover all the requirements of remote location based companies. Virtual tenants are able to benefit from the premier business address and the full range of support services on offer through the park.

Connectivity

All buildings at the main site are connected to a gigabit fibre optic backbone enabling the delivery of a range of resilient and diverse services including superfast business broadband, MPLS solutions, leased lines, online backup and voice.

Superfast broadband is supplied with download speeds over 80 Mbit/s and upload speeds of up to 20 Mbit/s using FTTC and FTTP technology.

Leased lines – Up to 10 Gbit/s download and upload speed and unlimited data transfer offering high-speed, symmetric access to the Internet.

The Innovation Centres also benefit from superfast broadband by WarwickNET – a Tier 2 ISP partnership with the Science Park.

Professional Business Services

General business advice is provided by an in-house team of dedicated business support professionals supported by a number of partners and associates in the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire region. Over the last 20 years the team at Warwick Science Park have developed several innovative support methodologies for start-ups and growing businesses.

The current portfolio comprises:

Access to Finance – Able to offer companies support with funding, recovery/turnaround, transformation and investment readiness. Minerva, the Park’s own business angel network has continued to be an attractive source of finance for small companies  with over £3.3m invested alongside a further £11.2m leveraged in the last three years. The Minerva Programme introduces the West Midlands region’s high-potential companies to a network of venture capital funds and banks, and to the members of Warwick Science Parks own Minerva Business Angel Network and its five syndicates.

IGNITE – is the Science Park’s incubation and business acceleration programme. It draws on all of the assets within the business development team to provide support to start-ups and established firms within the sub region. IGNITE also maintains dedicated office space at incubators across the Park’s sites in Coventry and Warwickshire. Over 100 companies have already benefited from incubator space and over 500 companies were supported via the programme. The programme continues to nurture the most successful start up businesses in the sub region including award winning company Petshopbowl who have achieved a turnover of £5 million in 2014 from a standing start in 2010.

Techmark – A highly experienced (18 years and 750+ projects) technical marketing unit with expertise including strategy development, technology exploitation, developing markets and plans to access sales, working for companies and start-ups both within the Science Park and the region. Micro-clustering pioneers.

Inward Investment/Soft Landing – Founding partner of the UK Market Access Program which is the successor of the West Midlands inward investment programme called Bridge to Growth. Private sector partnership offering practical support services to foreign-owned companies in becoming established and to grow in the UK market. Attracted 300+ businesses to the UK and is currently attracting on average 30-40 businesses to the UK annually. Services include, part subsidised office space, discounted market analysis, sales lead generation, company formation, recruitment, back office administration, bookkeeping, payroll, accounting and other complementary support services.

University Facilities

The University of Warwick is one of the UK’s leading universities with an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation, and for links with business and industry. Founded in 1965 with an initial intake of 450 undergraduates, Warwick now has in excess of 22,000 students and £440 million turnover and is ranked comfortably in the top 10 of all UK university league tables, as well as being declared the 2015 Times and Sunday Times University of the year.

Warwick is one of the top ten universities targeted by the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers. Warwick is renowned for excellence and innovation within research and in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, was ranked seventh overall in the UK, with 65% of the University’s research rated as 3* (internationally excellent) or 4* (world leading). Warwick’s mission is to become a world leader in research and teaching.

From manufacturing to healthcare, from governance to food security, the University works with some of the world’s leading companies, providing R&D, consultancy, conferencing and continuing professional development. Current and previous work with corporate companies include the Warwick Healthcare Partnership and the Premium Automotive R&D Programme.

WMG – Is a world leading research institute and an international role model for how universities and business can successfully work together. A £100 million collaborative research programme with JLR, a £19 million Low Carbon Vehicle Technology Project and a £74million pa high value manufacturing Catapult are only a few examples of the thriving collaborations with industrial partners.

NAIC – The National Automotive Innovation Campus (NAIC) will provide a national focus and a critical mass of research capability, combining the expertise nationally and internationally from industry, universities, supply chain companies, SMEs etc. It will be a unique resource, with an environment to foster collaboration, cohesion and cross-fertilisation of knowledge and will provide a platform for greater involvement in EU-wide research programmes. It will enable academic/industry teams to work together in state of the art buildings, with tailored equipment to create and integrate breakthrough technologies with a whole system approach crossing multiple disciplines. It will address the shortage of skilled R&D staff in the automotive supply chain, creating a pipeline of people into companies. £150 million is being invested in the NAIC capital building and its research activities through a long-term commitment between Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Motors European Technical Centre, WMG and the University of Warwick, along with an expanding network of supplier companies. The government (Higher Education Funding Council England) has also provided £15 million of funding to support the capital project.

Warwick also has a range of services for small businesses, from materials analysis, access to facilities and state-of-the-art scientific equipment, licensing opportunities, joint research projects, and training courses are just some of the many ways in which they can help businesses grow and develop. The current programs include:

• Warwick Scientific Services – Delivers cutting-edge world class scientific services, technical measurement solutions, innovative translational research, and knowledge and training services to businesses that could benefit from expertise and instrumentation in Energy Efficiency, Life Sciences, Materials and High Performance Computing
• Commercial ventures and business strategy consultancy

The corporate relations team at Warwick works with over 400 successful companies, from global corporates to start-ups in markets including energy, healthcare, transport, advanced manufacturing, financial services and creative media to accelerate innovation and help ambitious companies to grow by giving them access to world-class research, education, consultancy facilities and networks of funders, business, support bodies and entrepreneurs, both local and global.

Research Technology Platforms

The RTP programme provides an integrated network of world-class technologies to ensure researchers have access to the equipment and expertise to carry out outstanding science. The RTPs are readily available and easily accessible to researchers at Warwick and to external partners from academia and industry in the following areas:

• Biomedical Services Unit RTP
• Electron Microscopy RTP
• Scientific Computing RTP
• WPH Proteomics RTP
• X-ray Diffraction RTP