Community values are key for Sciontec

2025 is turning into another landmark year for Sciontec, the spin-out property development company of Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter.

The rapid transformation of a previously closed innovation hub saw the opening of CENTRAL TECH in May, while enabling work has just got under way at HEMISPHERE One, the first of two new laboratory and workspace buildings at Paddington Village.

“It’s both exciting and daunting,” said George Barclay, Sciontec’s head of property. “I think we’re seeing that right across the UK science and technology sector at the moment, with the level of growth and development opportunities.”

Sciontec is at the heart of a vision to make Liverpool the go-to destination for innovation, technology, health and life sciences focused businesses, with Knowledge Quarter Liverpool (KQ Liverpool) leveraging the groundbreaking successes of the city region’s universities, hospitals and digital sector.

KQ Liverpool, the quadruple-helix partnership between the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool City Council, Bruntwood SciTech, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group (UHLG), is the city’s innovation district.

“The vision was to join up all the strategic angles of those six organisations, creating the Knowledge Quarter as an urban innovation district covering around 450 acres, or about half of the city centre,” said George Barclay.

“When you arrive at Liverpool Lime Street station and head out the main doors, that’s where the boundary starts and stretches right up to Paddington Village, Liverpool City Council’s flagship development site. Our innovation district is home to two major universities’ campuses, world leading hospitals, and a dynamic business community, as well as a big cultural element including two cathedrals, theatres and hospitality venues.

“KQ Liverpool is home to tens of thousands of students, academics, clinicians and a lot of small and medium-sized businesses. However, we are always looking to support and positively impact upon the entire city region, not just within our physical boundaries.”

Colin Sinclair, CEO of both KQ Liverpool and Sciontec, was headhunted from developer Bruntwood to lead the venture right from the start. Alongside his background in commercial property, he had a previous five-year spell as the highly successful chief executive of MIDAS, Manchester's inward investment agency, which led the promotion of the city as a global business location.

George continued: “Colin was brought in and one of his first jobs was to look at the existing assets within KQ Liverpool which were owned by the partners and bring them together.

“The big one at the time was Liverpool Science Park; three buildings based next door to the Metropolitan Cathedral, owned by the two universities and the Council.

“KQ Liverpool set up a commercial development organisation, originally called KQ Development Company, that later became Sciontec Developments Limited (Sciontec), which took over ownership of the science park. It was about that time that Bruntwood SciTech came on board too as the sixth member of the KQ Liverpool partnership.

“Part of the reason for the change of name to Sciontec was that it didn’t pin us down geographically. So our prime focus at the moment is developing properties within KQ Liverpool, but that doesn’t rule out looking at opportunities further afield in the city region in the future.”

Wider community purpose

Sciontec was given the role of bringing together, modernising and expanding KQ Liverpool’s existing science and technology assets. But six years later, its remit now extends far beyond that. “We are a property development company with a wider community purpose,” said George.

Alongside three floors of The Spine, a 14-storey office building completed in 2021 at Paddington Village, and Liverpool Science Park – almost constantly at full occupancy – Sciontec also looks after marketing and lead generation for the Cotton Exchange and Cotton House and The Plaza. The company’s newest addition is the former Sensor City building, which had closed five years ago amid the Covid pandemic.

The landmark gold-clad building on Copperas Hill was taken over by Sciontec in March and reopened as a tech innovation hub, called CENTRAL TECH, just 65 days later. The 27,000 sq ft facility now provides a range of flexible workspaces and event spaces, aimed at business customers looking for offices, labs, and coworking hot desks, within the health, life sciences, engineering, technology and digitalisation sectors.

Around the same time, Sciontec unveiled Morgan Sindall as its preferred contractor for its £61m Hemisphere One project at Paddington Village.

George said: “This is a dual development: Hemisphere One and Two, a pair of new eight-storey buildings offering a net total 216,861 sq ft laboratory and workspace, providing occupiers with access to a unique combination of bio labs, data labs, robotics labs and innovation labs, alongside incubator and grow-on space.

“Paddington Village is a 30-acre strategic development zone created as part of KQ Liverpool and is home to The Spine, which is owned by the council and is a Liverpool showcase of great quality office space. The key anchor tenant there is the Royal College of Physicians, which has attracted a huge mix of other medical companies. We manage three floors of serviced workspace at The Spine, through our Sciontec AI products, so we also have tenant companies in the building.

“Paddington Village is on a former brownfield site that used to be the school where both myself and our head of commercial, Leanne Katsande, were pupils, along with a number of our other colleagues.”

George continued: “One of the biggest announcements for us in recent years was the government’s investment zone funding, which Liverpool was fortunate to benefit from. The Liverpool City Region Life Sciences Innovation Zone will help us unlock future benefits of both what we will do at HEMISPHERE, but also in terms of the work we do to inspire the next generation, delivering workshops, tours and events for kids from across the Liverpool City Region through KQ Futures, showing people the opportunities in a range of innovation sectors right on their doorsteps.

“We are encouraging aspiration among the local community as we position ourselves as a centre for technology and life sciences. We want local people to see the career opportunities available, take up training and secure the high value jobs that are coming here. It’s part of that wider community purpose I mentioned earlier.”

A great entrepreneurial tradition

While the creation of new jobs is a positive thing, George explained: “ here’s not a huge amount of availability of top-of-the-range office space. That’s one of the challenges we have in Liverpool.

“But we are attracting many kinds of innovative new companies because of access to our universities, as firms choose to relocate here. As a city, Liverpool has a great entrepreneurial tradition; we get a lot of people starting businesses here so inevitably space is a problem, which is one of the issues that CENTRAL TECH will help address.

“That was so exciting, because it is a landmark building that we were able to bring back into use. Conversations around the building had been going on for years but when it finally happened, it was all fairly rapid.

“The relaunch has had a great response from the local community. People who have walked past it for years on their commute, or local residents, were coming in asking what was happening and saying how fantastic it was to see it back in use.

“In those 65 days between completion and the opening, we secured more than 50 per cent pre letting of the space, which underlines the demand. It was a hard couple of months but well worth it.

“And it is creating an air of confidence. The market was a little stagnant but this shows what we can achieve in Liverpool.

“Because within Sciontec we really care about achieving that success for the city. The majority of us are Scousers and it’s really exciting because we all genuinely care. We went to school in the area and now we are working with schools, even sometimes working with our old teachers.

“At the same time we recognise the importance of bringing new people and new business into Liverpool, creating more high-value jobs through science and technology.

“We also have a very good quality of living that is relatively cost effective compared to other cities, there’s green spaces, good transport networks. I’ve got two kids and it’s a great place to raise children.

“Sciontec’s community element also comes from our ownership structure. As a result there is a big desire to give back to the city, and a huge amount of charitable work from people across our sites. So in September our CEO, Colin Sinclair, ran 52 miles – the equivalent of two marathons – around all six boroughs of the Liverpool City Region to raise money for six local children’s charities.”

George added: “Liverpool, like many other cities, had a very tough time over recent years, hit by Covid, and impacted by the war in Ukraine and energy costs. But there is a feeling now of things turning around.

“We’ve got a really proactive combined authority that will go out and pitch the city region; they were in Hong Kong recently, they've been in Boston and they've brought in a company called Kyndryl, who will create 1,000 AI-based jobs within Liverpool City Region.

“At the same time we are seeing a real increase in spin-outs, part of a conscious effort from both of our university partners. And we have seen more localised funds and investment group partners such as LYVA Labs, based in CENTRAL TECH, who work with early-stage businesses to help them grow, through seed funding and business support. And they are just one of several similar businesses in the city region now, often focused on clean-tech and deep-tech.”

“Within Liverpool Science Park we have two high-value manufacturing catapults as customers; the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) and the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI). The arrival of the MTC was particularly transformational for us – and it took occupancy at Liverpool Science Park’s original site to 100% for the first time.

“All the pieces are falling into place, so we are in a position where we can shout about Liverpool as being a really innovative city.”

---

Discover more online Sciontec provides outstanding office and lab space in Liverpool. Find out more at https://sciontec.co.uk or https://kqliverpool.co.uk