Last week saw construction officially get underway on two new Innovation Centres at the James Hutton Institute:
The International Barley Hub (IBH)
The Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC)
The aim of these new Innovation Centres is to bring together industry and world-leading science to focus on climate-change solutions for the food and drink industry and encourage a green recovery from the disruption caused by COVID-19.
The IBH is the first project in a series of commercially focussed innovation hubs. It will be a unique platform for the translation of barley research into commercial benefits for the entire brewing, whisky and food value chain. This purpose-built building will house visitor/conferencing facilities, laboratory research, administration and staff ancillary support areas.
The APGC aims to deliver increased commercial, economic and environmental benefits to the agricultural, food and drink sectors in the UK and internationally, by innovative use of precision-controlled environmental technologies. This purpose-built facility will be conjoined to the IBH and will share common staff ancillary support areas whilst providing the necessary phenotyping, growth towers and controlled environment required to support their frontier research.
Both facilities are part of a campus-wide development supported by The Tay Cities Deal (TCD) which secured funding of £45 million from the UK Government and £17 million from the Scottish Government.
Here at Doig+Smith we are excited to be supporting these innovative projects, having been appointed by the The James Hutton Institute to provide our services in Cost Management.