Scotland hopes for winning formula at chemical trade fair

Representatives from industry and academia are travelling to San Francisco this weekend for the Informex USA event, which opens on Tuesday.

Sandy Dobbie, head of Chemical Sciences Scotland – the body launched to bring together government, businesses and universities to promote the sector – said the strong links between academics and industrialists in Scotland was one of the key selling points.

He said that if companies could be tempted to site their research and development divisions in Scotland then production facilities or head office functions could follow.

Dobbie also said Scotland could make an attractive base for North American or Asian companies that are looking to move into Europe.

Scotland's chemical industry has been described as a "sleeping giant", employing 14,000 staff directly and supporting a further 70,000 jobs, but rarely featuring in the public's collective consciousness.

About 150 chemical companies are based in Scotland, collectively turning over 9.3 billion and contributing 2.2bn to the country's exports, making the sector the second largest exporter in the economy behind the whisky industry.

Dobbie told Scotland on Sunday: "We've got superb results in global terms coming from chemistry research in Scotland and we have a very strong chemical industry.

"So we identified that one of the things we should use as a means of encouraging people to think about Scotland as a location for their chemistry-based businesses is the research in our universities. This is the start of that theme in international markets."

Dobbie said Scotland's chemical sciences sector operated across a broad spread of disciplines and so Chemical Science Scotland is not being too prescriptive about which companies it would target.

But he said the focus would be on attracting "high value" research and development – particularly in areas like agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals.