Farmer opens Business Gateway centre at university campus

KWIK Fit founder Sir Tom Farmer, pictured left, will today open what is believed to be the first centre to bring together Business Gateway’s support for small companies with university expertise.

East Lothian Council is opening its Business Gateway office within Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh, on the edge of Edinburgh. Farmer is the university’s chancellor, a position he has held since the institution gained university status in 2007.

The move is understood to be the first time that a Business Gateway office has been located on a university campus.

Queen Margaret University’s “Business Innovation Zone”, in which the office will be located, will give local businesses access to the institution’s facilities and expertise and will also help the university’s students to launch their own firms.

Mark Pool, director of Roots Soda, a firm developing soft drinks which is based in the university’s incubator centre, said: “It is really important new enterprises get as much help and support in the early days as possible.

“We wanted to start a business for some time but the prospect can be daunting, you know that you can’t do it all yourself, and since the start everyone at QMU has been really supportive of what we are doing.

“Just knowing that we have them behind us is a real boost.”