Fourth industrial revolution - John Mackenzie

Scotland is synonymous with ingenuity and innovation. The country is the birthplace of the world’s first telephone and James Watt’s next-generation steam engine, which launched Britain into the Industrial Revolution during the 18th century. Today, the country is on the cusp of a fourth industrial revolution - one that will be led by scientific R&D.

The fourth industrial revolution will bind together the worlds of industry, manufacturing, technology, and biology. Through the convergence of science, machine learning and AI, pioneering new discoveries will be made.

Buoyant capital raising for life sciences firms is creating a huge opportunity for real estate investors and developers to create workspaces for them, from labs and research centres, to education facilities, manufacturing plants, and offices.

While the pandemic has hit traditional commercial real estate sectors, such as offices and retail, life sciences stands apart.

John Mackenzie, Director, (Scotland), Pioneer Group.

Much of the work conducted by life sciences companies, pharmaceutical, biotech, and other medical research fields, is simply impossible to conduct remotely. Plus, these businesses are expanding, driven by increasing government spending and exuberant private markets.

The importance of providing purpose-built space for science cannot be understated.

Life sciences in all its forms is an increasingly important part of the Scottish economy. The sector provides 41,700 jobs across more than 700 diverse businesses and higher education institutions. As well as providing economic benefits, life sciences also contribute to improving the health and medical care of people and animals. But without the physical real estate, the sector cannot grow.

Life sciences rely on a three-way partnership between academics (custodians of ideas and innovations); governments (as funders and customers); and industry (who invest, commercialise and of course, acquire). Therefore, modern biotech and techbio companies have high standards for lab space and amenity, and also demand proximity to leading institutions.

This ‘triple helix’, as it is known, cannot be created overnight, but luckily it is already present in much of Scotland - namely in areas like Glasgow and Edinburgh. Pioneer Group’s 126-acre Edinburgh Technopole development is plugged into an innovation ecosystem that has a critical mass of companies operating in the ‘AAA’ space - agritech, aquaculture and animal health. Edinburgh Technopole tenants benefit from proximity to the Midlothian Science Zone, one of Scotland’s biggest innovation ecosystems - one that is home to University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus, which boasts the highest concentration of animal health expertise in Europe.

Such an ecosystem helps companies commercialise their research - the ultimate end goal for any aspiring biotech.

RoslinTech, a company based out of the Roslin Innovation Centre which grows cultivated meat from animal cells without the need to raise animals, recently closed an £11 million Series A round. While investment activity in Scotland – a recent report from Pioneer Group and JLL revealed that Scottish life science start-ups raised a record £253 million over the last five years – has been driven by large fundraises from the other Pioneer Group site – like BioCity Glasgow where tenants include Amphista Therapeutics and Enterobiotix.

Developers and operators, such as Pioneer Group, are the enablers for the growth of Scottish life sciences. Delivering the physical life science real estate today will help the unicorns of tomorrow, which is why we are committed to growing our footprint in Scotland.

John Mackenzie, Director, (Scotland), Pioneer Group.