OakNorth Bank has provided a £44.4 mln (€51 mln) loan to the science and tech sector’s property provider, Bruntwood SciTech, for the development of new office and lab space for businesses in the science and tech sector in Birmingham.
Established in 2018 in a 50:50 joint venture between regional property company Bruntwood and Legal & General, Bruntwood SciTech is dedicated to driving the growth of the UK science and technology sector. With a portfolio valued at more than £526.8 mln totalling over 1.8m sq ft and home to over 500 science and tech businesses the Bruntwood SciTech network includes nine sector-specialist campuses across Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Alderley Park – the UK’s largest single-site life science campus, and most recently Melbourn Science Park in the heart of the ‘golden triangle’.
The capital from OakNorth Bank will be used to support the development of Innovation Birmingham, a digital tech campus situated in the heart of Birmingham’s Knowledge Quarter, and Birmingham Health Innovation Campus, co-located with the city’s universities and NHS hospital trusts which is set to become a major healthcare technologies campus.
‘2020 was an unprecedented year, none more so than for our science and tech sector,’ said Kate Lawlor, CEO, Bruntwood SciTech. ‘We witnessed first-hand the importance of UK businesses working at the forefront of life sciences and tech and the impact they had on the country as they pivoted at pace and at scale in the fight against the pandemic.’
