Almost fifty years on from the closure of the Cupar Sugar Beet factory, a Rural Innovation Support Service (RISS) group aims to look into the feasibility and steps required to re-establish the crop and its processing in eastern Scotland.  The 2020 driver is to contribute to climate change mitigation, rather than sugar for human consumption, and the decarbonisation of industry to meet Scotland’s greenhouse gas reduction targets, by producing bioethanol as a fuel additive and new plant-based biotech products.

Minister welcomes major international title.

Business Minister Jamie Hepburn visited Halley Stevensons to find out how the £300k grant is supporting the company to invest in equipment that will allow the firm to develop products from recycled materials and plant-based waxes.

Glasgow-based regulatory technology (RegTech) firm Encompass has received a £1.97m research and development (R&D) grant from Scottish Enterprise to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform for its financial services clients, it was announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today.

The Data Lab, Scotland’s Innovation Centre for data science and artificial intelligence (AI), has launched a new business advisory service to accelerate data-driven innovation and collaboration between businesses.      

Scottish Enterprise has welcomed findings from the latest Export Scotland Statistics which reveal that Scotland’s international exports (excluding oil and gas) increased by £1.1 billion (3.4%) in 2018, from £32.7 billion to £33.8 billion.  Exports to the rest of the UK also increased by £1.2 billion (up 2.5% on 2017), bringing the total value of Scottish exports up to £85 billion.

Scotland's growing financial technology (fintech) cluster has been officially recognised by the body responsible for the benchmarking and quality labelling of cluster management organisations globally.

Engineering design and manufacturing firm Albacom is set to expand after raising £500,000 to develop its business in new markets. The company, which has grown out of the 1990 MBO of the Dundee division of Ferranti, specialises in electrical components for the global defence and aviation industry and has diversified in recent years into new commercial sectors.

Aberdeen-based multi-discipline integrated service provider Integrity XL is poised to grow its business having invested £1 million in the purchase of two 90K liquid nitrogen pumps.

Companies are benefiting from £170,000 of Scottish Government funding to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help tackle the global climate emergency.

Archaeological services provider GUARD Archaeology Limited is the latest business in Scotland to become employee-owned, with 32 members of staff given a stake in the business. 

Edinburgh-based bioinformatics company, Fios Genomics (Fios), which helps pharmaceutical and biotech companies to analyse the large amounts of data generated during drug development, has announced a strategic partnership with one of the world’s largest contract research organisations, Charles River Laboratories, (Charles River).