Animal science start-up network wins European funds

Published on Friday 2 January 2009 21:47

MORE than £300,000 has been pumped into a Scottish science organisation to help improve links between businesses and academia.

Genesis Faraday, which is based at the Roslin Biocentre in Midlothian, has received 378,000 from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to help "animal breeders, farmers and the environment".

The fresh funding will be used in the body's Knowledge Transfer Network project, which aims to boost understanding between academia and industry.

The project aims to capitalise on Scotland's world-leading research in animal health, taking products and processes to the market and allow further investment in genetic research.

Genesis Faraday said the ERDF cash will help "hundreds" of livestock production businesses – including individual sheep, pig, chicken, cattle and fish farmers – by allowing the latest in selective breeding technologies to reach a larger market.

Chris Warkup, director of Genesis Faraday, told The Scotsman: "The ERDF gives us more capacity to work with small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and is very much about helping businesses to grow through innovation.

"We normally work with sheep and cattle breeders through their organisations and breed societies. Our target audience is the breeder, not the commercial farmer, but farming businesses will benefit indirectly because we will help the breeders to produce better rams, ewes, bulls and heifers."

He added: "Scotland is very strong in animal sciences. But if you analyse the record of start-up and spin-out companies then I think we can do better. That's one of the things on which we want to focus."

He said the money would also help with innovation in existing SMEs as well as helping to start new companies. Warkup said SMEs could also get help from Genomia, a high-risk seed fund to aid spin-outs and start-ups in the life science sector.