When Dutch laboratory investor Kadans chose Manchester for its forthcoming new science campus, the company had two opportunities in its sights.
One was a straightforward commercial reality, says James Sheppard, the company’s international head of commercial strategy. “Fundamentally, what we saw in Manchester was a classic supply and demand imbalance,” he says of the life science companies increasingly wanting to set up or grow in the city.
“We saw a lot of great companies, small and large, looking for space.” The other reason, he adds, was arguably “more interesting”.
Manchester’s scientific research — from innovation at globally renowned institutions such as the Christie cancer hospital to the fizzing ecosystem of spinouts and start-ups on the Oxford Road corridor linking its universities — is “of a quality that would match anywhere in the world”, says Sheppard.
“What we have been really enthused about is the emphasis on demonstrating the impact of the science — the desire and ability to create new businesses.”
Manchester and the wider north-west of England have a history dating back decades of commercialising the life sciences. But 12 years ago that ecosystem was dealt a heavy blow when pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca decided to move its historic northern headquarters from Cheshire’s Alderley Park, 30km south of Manchester, to Cambridge.
“Many people thought [it] would be the death knell of the life sciences cluster in the region,” admits John Holden, associate vice-president of major special projects at Manchester university. “But actually it’s continued to grow.”
The number of life sciences businesses in the north-west grew at more than twice the national rate between 2016 and 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics, with more than a third of those in Greater Manchester.
Alderley Park now houses more than 200 science companies, while cross-sector partnerships around Manchester’s universities and the adjacent NHS trust — England’s biggest — are also paying dividends.
Research by analysts Growth Flag puts Manchester third after London and Birmingham for new health sector businesses over the past 12 months, identifying particularly strong growth potential among companies in biotech research and development and medical instrument manufacturing.
“The development of the start-up, early-stage SME side of things has been substantial,” says Holden, adding that this is “in part a function” of the way the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors have changed.
“Companies are doing much less R&D in house and buying R&D via early-stage companies,” he explains. “So there’s lots bubbling around that get snapped up by one of the corporates once they’ve proved their technology.”
Before Kadans identified opportunities in the city, Manchester-based property developer Bruntwood had already begun to focus on lab space. Bruntwood SciTech, the developer’s joint venture with financial group Legal & General and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, is about to open Citylabs 4.0, the latest phase of its science pipeline around Oxford Road. In 2014, it took over Alderley Park from AstraZeneca.
“What we effectively inherited there were 2,500 scientists who weren’t going to Cambridge, many of whom wanted to set up their own businesses, and some amazing facilities,” says Chris Oglesby, Bruntwood SciTech chief executive. “What we’ve seen in parallel, given the strength of the historic clustering in Cheshire, is then the growth of the sector in Manchester.”
That has been helped by the city’s focus on graduate retention over recent years, as the city centre — only sparsely populated as a residential area in the 1990s — has undergone a transformation in the 21st century.
Julia Buckler started her scientific career at DxS Price, an AstraZeneca diagnostics spinout based near the University of Manchester. In 2009, it was bought out by the German multinational Qiagen and Buckler now heads up the company’s molecular diagnostics assays.
The knowledge-sharing and graduate availability that proximity to the NHS and universities enables “does mean you’re able to not just survive, but thrive, because there’s always that growth potential”, she says.
“That cluster of companies with a similar field really accelerates each of us.” The company hires directly from the University of Manchester, where for the past few years it has been helping to run a biomedical course.
Now branching out from oncology, Qiagen’s Manchester base is developing a cartridge-based device for identifying the gene marker for Alzheimer’s disease, which could eventually be used by clinicians to make treatment decisions on the spot.
Buckler, Holden and Oglesby all argue that such a life sciences ecosystem is complementary to that of Cambridge, rather than in competition with it. In the past year the two cities, led by their universities, have set up a partnership aimed at presenting a joint opportunity in innovation, including life sciences, to inward investors and entrepreneurs.
Holden says Manchester’s cheaper cost of living, less overburdened infrastructure and its appeal to young graduates can provide a reciprocal offer to the high-value R&D expertise of the traditional “golden triangle” of London, Oxford and Cambridge. Kadans already has lab space in Cambridge but will be adding to Manchester’s ecosystem with more than 200,000 sq ft of new lab space.
Sheppard notes that Manchester is “not perfect”. Despite funds such as Northern Gritstone, the investment platform set up by Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds universities specifically for innovation spinouts, the city is lacking in venture capital, he says.
“One building in London will probably have more VC funds than the whole of Manchester,” he adds. Building that architecture will “take time”.
Nevertheless, Manchester’s life sciences cluster has bounced back and evolved following AstraZeneca’s departure, Sheppard says. His prospective tenants range from “multi-billion-pound global pharma looking at a very specific R&D through to homegrown businesses”.
Sheppard agrees that Manchester needs to sell itself as a competitor with international cities, rather than its counterparts in the UK. “The stat that always stuck with me, when we were going through our internal investment committee process, was that we saw more demand in Manchester in Q4 last year than we did in Madrid — and than we saw in Berlin,” he adds.
“These are major science markets and Manchester was outperforming them. That’s what really excited us about the city.”
