News
August 2002
UK retains top spot despite worldwide slump in investment
The UK retained its position as Europe’s leading inward investment location in 2001-02, despite a fall from the record levels seen in the previous year. The number of inward investment projects fell by 12 per cent, reflecting an international decline in investment caused largely by reduced activity in the technology sector. The sharpest fall in the UK was in US investment in technology.
The government’s inward investment agency, Invest.UK, recorded 764 investment projects in the year to 31 March. These included new projects, expansions and acquisitions involving companies from 38 countries. The total number of new jobs created was 34,087 - 52 per cent fewer than in the previous year. According to the Office of National Statistics, however, in the first quarter of 2002 the UK’s stock of foreign-owned investment stood at a record level of $527 billion, 10 per cent higher than in the corresponding quarter of 2001. "The UK is an excellent place to do business and this is reflected in our success in attracting consistently high levels of inward investment," said trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt.
According to US government statistics, the UK receives almost double the amount of US investment into the Netherlands, over four times that into Germany and six times the amount invested in France. The US accounted for 288 of the year’s inward investment projects, by far the largest total of any country. It was followed by Japan (60), Canada (55), France and Germany (50 each) and the Netherlands (31). Of the remaining projects, 97 came from other EU countries and 133 from other parts of the world.
By sector, software accounted for the greatest number of projects, with 87, followed by IT/internet services (82), automotive (72) and electronics (54). The rest of the top ten was made up by telecommunications and finance (41 apiece), management/business (35), pharmaceuticals/biotechnology (28), food and drink (28), engineering (27) and the creative industries (22).
Despite these success stories, however, it was a difficult year worldwide. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, foreign direct investment into the world’s richest countries fell by more than half from 2000’s record levels, and was set to continue falling. The decline, the steepest for decades, was due to a number of factors, including a fall-off in privatisation deals and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, but could be seen as a cyclical downturn after a period of exceptional expansion. The OECD said the downturn was a ‘correction’ to more sustainable levels of investment flow after the ‘bubble’ of 1999-2000.
Total inflows into the organisation’s 30 member countries fell by 56 per cent to $566 billion, just above the 1998 level, and outflows fell 54 per cent to $593.1 billion. The OECD estimated that inflows could fall by a further 25 per cent this year and outflows by 20 per cent, bringing levels back to where they were in 1997.
Brown’s spending review brings biggest boost for 30 years
Chancellor Gordon Brown announced the biggest sustained increase in government spending for nearly 30 years on 15 July when he unveiled his Spending Review for 2002. He put health and education at the forefront of government spending plans, but all government departments will see real terms increases in their budgets. Overall, public expenditure, including non-departmental items such as public service pensions and social security benefit payments, will increase by some $139.5 billion between now and 2006, to $766.5 billion. Spending by Whitehall departments will rise by $91.5 billion to $451.5 billion. Mr Brown stuck to his April Budget forecast that the UK economy would grow by 2-2.5 per cent this year, and dismissed claims that turmoil in the financial markets or falling share prices would have any effect on his spending plans.
Spending on education will grow by more than $18 billion within three years, to $86.7 billion a year. This represents an annual rise in real terms of 6 per cent for the next three years and will bring education spending up to 5.6 per cent of gross domestic product by 2005-06 - the biggest sustained rise for a generation, according to Mr Brown.
The fastest growing area of spending in the next three years will be transport, which will see a real-terms increase of 12 per cent a year in its budget, boosting it from $11.6 billion this year to $17.4 billion in 2005-06. This will allow the government to address the current shortcomings of the transport system and to implement its Ten Year Plan. In particular, Transport secretary Alistair Darling will consult on the need to increase airport capacity.
The budget of the Office of Fair Trading will be increased to help boost the competitiveness of the business environment and to eradicate anti-competitive practices. To assist small businesses, the corporate tax cuts and exemption from stamp duty in areas of high unemployment, announced in April, will be matched with new help for start-ups. The Department for Education and Skills will receive new money to improve workplace skills and to extend the modern apprenticeship scheme. The work permit scheme for key workers from abroad will be extended to an expected 175,000 next year and a new network of jobcentres will be established around the country to help those seeking work.
RDAs given enhanced role in regional planning
As part of the Spending Review, England’s nine Regional Development Agencies will receive more funding and greater autonomy in deciding how the money is spent. The chancellor increased RDA budgets from about $2.4 billion this year to $3 billion in 2005-06. The agencies’ task will be to raise economic performance at the grassroots level and they will be given new responsibilities, such as contributing directly to planning and transport strategy. They will also get more involved in enterprise and vocational training, with pilot schemes planned for the Small Business Service and the Learning and Skills Council.
The strengthening of the RDAs’ role is partly due to the influence of deputy prime minister John Prescott, who has responsibility for the regions. As part of his regional strategy, Mr Prescott has announced a reform of the planning system, with an extra $525 million pledged to improve its performance over the next three years. Counties will be given a new statutory role in the regional planning system and business planning zones, benefiting from a reduced regulatory regime, will be introduced to help create jobs in areas of high unemployment. Planning for major infrastructure projects will be speeded up, with a streamlining of the inquiry process.
Science receives huge injection of investment
One of the biggest winners in Gordon Brown’s Spending Review was the science sector. Public spending on science will rise by 10 per cent a year over the next three years and by 2005-06 the science budget is set to be twice as large as in 1997-98 - the fastest growth in investment since the Wilson government was seduced by the "white heat of technology" in the 1960s. The extra money, which will be provided through the Office of Science and Technology, part of the DTI, and the Department of Education, will amount to $1.9 billion a year by 2006.
Scientists welcomed the review, especially as it tackled a number of key issues, such as the indirect costs of research and pay increases for postgraduate researchers. In addition, the government plans to create a dedicated capital funding stream for university laboratories, worth $750 million a year by 2006. Universities will be required to provide only 10 per cent in matching funding, compared with 25 per cent previously.
In a separate announcement, health secretary Alan Milburn unveiled plans for a national network of Genetic Knowledge Parks that would put the UK at the leading edge of research into genetic technology. A first wave of six parks will be created in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Newcastle, the North West and Wales, bringing together clinicians, scientists, academics and industrial researchers on a single site. As centres of clinical and scientific excellence, the knowledge parks will work to improve diagnosis, treatment and counselling for patients. They will be supported by two National Genetics Reference Libraries in Salisbury, in the South West, and Manchester, in the North West. These will assess and develop new genetic technologies, and will each receive government funding of $750,000 a year.
Major expansion planned for UK’s airports
The government is planning a major expansion of the UK’s airports - the biggest for 50 years - with at least three new runways to be built in South East England. The plans, unveiled in a consultation paper by Transport secretary Alistair Darling, aim to tackle an anticipated doubling in the number of air passengers over the next 30 years. A number of options have been put forward, including a combination of new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted airports and a completely new airport on the Thames estuary at Cliffe in North Kent. There will also be a major expansion of the regional airport network.
Mr Darling believes there is "a clear economic case" for expansion in the South East if it is to maintain its position as a key international hub, in competition with Paris and Amsterdam. More than 180 million passengers fly into the UK each year, most of them into airports in the South East. This figure is expected to rise to 400 million by 2020 and could reach 500 million by 2030. Of the existing South East airports, Stansted in Essex is top of the list for expansion, as it has good transport links to the M11 motorway and is situated in an area of relatively sparse population. One option is to build up to three new runways at Stansted and an extra, short one at Heathrow.
Other proposals include the development of either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport in Scotland as an international hub, a new terminal at Manchester Airport and the construction of a new runway at Birmingham in the West Midlands. Manston Airport in Kent could be developed as a freight centre, while Southampton and Luton could be expanded to take more continental and charter flights. A decision on the preferred options is expected early next year, when a white paper will be published.
Low-cost, no-frills airlines - such as Ryanair, Buzz, EasyJet and Go - now carry some 25 per cent of scheduled passengers between the UK and the rest of the European Union. The latest entrant to this profitable market is BMIbaby, a division of BMI British Midland. BMIbaby began services in March from East Midlands Airport. It now plans to open a second UK base at Cardiff International Airport in South Wales, where it will cater for 1 million passengers a year. It currently operates nine European routes out of East Midlands and plans to add a further six this winter.
Humberside International Airport, in Yorkshire and Humber, has announced a 25 per cent increase in passenger numbers, making it one of the fastest growing airports in the UK. The increase is largely due to the introduction of new services to holiday destinations in southern Europe. Teesside International Airport in the North East, meanwhile, is seeking a strategic partner from the private sector to assist in its long-term development. The airport has identified a number of infrastructure needs to cater for growth up to 2015 and beyond.
Outlook improves for manufacturers
There was good news for manufacturers as output in May rose for the second successive month. Production grew by 0.7 per cent, following April’s rise of 1.1 per cent, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This was the first time since autumn 2000 that an increase in output had not been immediately followed by a fresh slump and, according to economists, it indicates that the sector, hard hit by the global economic downturn, may be reaching the end of a long and severe recession.
Strong performance has been seen recently from the food, drink and tobacco sectors and from textiles, leather and clothing. Production of electrical and optical equipment, hard hit by the bursting of the technology bubble, rose by a modest 0.3 per cent. Output of machinery and equipment, however, failed to grow in the three months to May. Goods exports rose strongly for the second month in a row but, overall, manufacturing output in May was still down 2.6 per cent year-on-year.
Producers were helped by a sharp fall in their costs, particularly those of petrol and raw materials, such as chemicals and metals. Input prices in June were down 1 per cent on the month and 7.2 per cent on the year, according to the ONS. The savings came from a further fall in the oil price and depressed global commodity prices, caused mainly by slack demand from the Group of Seven industrial nations.
In particular, UK manufacturers have been helped by sterling’s fall against the euro, coupled with a rise against the dollar. The eurozone is the biggest market for UK exporters and any fall in the pound against the euro makes them more competitive. At the same time, commodities and materials bought on the international market are usually priced in dollars. One economist described recent currency movements as "the ideal combination" for British exporters.
Financial services sector sees return to profit
The financial services sector is also showing signs of a pick-up, with business volumes growing at their fastest rate for two and a half years, according to a quarterly survey from the Confederation of British Industry and professional services firm PwC. The recovery over the last three months has seen business return to pre-September 11 levels, says the CBI, with profits rising at their fastest rate since September 2000, ending four quarters of decline. The CBI believes the figures indicate that a global economic recovery is under way although, it says, the pace of growth is likely to slow in the next quarter.
London is maintaining its position as Europe’s leading financial centre, despite the UK’s decision to remain outside the eurozone. The UK capital has increased its share of trading in foreign equities, from 49 per cent in 2000 to 56 per cent in 2001, according to figures from the World Federation of Exchanges. The increase came largely at the expense of the New York and Nasdaq stock exchanges in the US and Germany’s Deutsche Borse, and despite a fall over the last two years in the number of foreign companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, from 499 to 453.
Car-makers boost efficiency and productivity
The UK remains the most efficient car manufacturing base in Europe despite price competition and the strength of sterling, according to the annual European automotive productivity index from the World Markets Research Centre. The most productive of Europe’s 43 leading car plants was Nissan’s facility on Teesside in North East England, which in 2001 produced 296,500 vehicles and had an output per employee of 95 vehicles a year. This was the sixth year in succession that the Japanese-owned plant had taken the title of the most productive in Europe. It was closely followed by Toyota’s factory at Burnaston, near Derby in the East Midlands.
Nissan’s output was slightly down on the previous year’s figure of 101, but the company expressed its determination to climb back above the 100 cars-per-worker mark. It is looking to cut costs by 30 per cent and to raise production to 500,000 units per year. Honda’s expanded assembly line at Swindon in Wiltshire, South West England, showed one of the biggest jumps in productivity, which leapt by 17.5 per cent to 67 cars per worker per year. Across Europe, productivity remained almost unchanged from 2000, at 58.3 units per year.
Science projects put UK at cutting edge
The government’s announcement of a huge increase in science spending has been welcomed by the scientific community, but even before that the sector was buzzing with activity. University scientists, for example, are to benefit from a new $79.5 million supercomputing service that will be the most powerful academic computer in Europe. The service will be based at the government’s Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, North West England and will be jointly run with a team from Edinburgh University.
Based on IBM’s new Power 4 technology, it will enable scientists to tackle tasks that have previously been impossible - such as simulating air flows around an aircraft in flight. Other examples include the interaction between drugs and biological molecules in pharmaceutical research and investigation into the structure of the earth’s molten core. The supercomputer will be about 10 times more powerful than the UK’s existing supercomputer service, which is based on Cray technology and located in Manchester. It will begin operation in December, with an initial capability of 6.7 teraflops (6.7 trillion operations) per second, and will be steadily upgraded to reach a capacity of 22 teraflops by 2006.
In Oxfordshire, South East England, plans have been announced for a new multi-centre enterprise hub, to join the 13 hubs already approved in the South East since 1999. The Southern Oxfordshire Enterprise Hub (SOEH) will be based on four innovation sites - at Harwell, Wallingford, Culham and Milton Park - and will offer 90,000 sq ft of incubator space for young businesses and entrepreneurs. It will focus on environmental, life and physical sciences and engineering applications, and will strengthen links between Oxfordshire science and business parks and increase the availability of incubator and ‘grow on’ space. SOEH will also provide links with the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and other important sites in the area. As a whole, the hub network provides more than 250,000 sq ft of incubator space across the South East region and supports 300 companies.
3D digital scanning specialist Arius 3D Inc of Canada is to build a $10 million 3D digital imaging centre at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The European Innovation Centre, which will employ up to 250 people over the next five years, will provide digital scanning services to a wide range of customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It will work with Dundee and Abertay universities on research and development projects into new applications for advanced scanning technology and improvements to the technology itself. Its current uses include scanning objects for use in websites and interactive computer programmes; digitising rare historical artefacts for museums; scanning body organs and bones for medical teaching; and industrial rapid-prototyping and reverse engineering.
Also in Scotland, Plexus Technology Group of Wisconsin has established a conceptual design centre on the Alba Campus at Livingston. Plexus provides product realisation services to manufacturers in industries such as networking, data communications, medicine and computer electronics. This is the second new design centre it has opened in Scotland this year, following the establishment of a computer-aided design and test development operation at Melrose. The new facility will specialise in the medical computing and industrial equipment markets and will employ eight senior electronics and software engineers.
At Coventry University, in the West Midlands, work is under way on an a revolutionary design lab, believed to be the first of its kind in Europe. The Coventry University Digitisation and Modelling workshop - known as the CU-ADAM laboratory - will allow the university to extend the range of its design and modelling research - especially in the automotive field, for which it has a worldwide reputation. The $2 million facility will provide a full-size, drive-in 3D digitising bay, together with a computer-aided styling studio and a digital production theatre. The bulk of its funding was provided by the Science Research Investment Fund. Coventry University works closely with the local automotive industry and the depth of the relationship was illustrated earlier this year when Jaguar sponsored one of its engineering buildings.
Steady as it goes for regional office markets
The UK’s major regional office markets were relatively stable in the six months from October 2001 to March 2002, according to DTZ Research. The company’s rore (UK regional offices research) report - covering Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham - found that the amount of available accommodation had risen marginally over the preceding six-month period and that take-up had fallen. However, take-up actually rose substantially in certain markets and, in particular, the banking and financial services sector had re-emerged as a major source of demand.
Availability in the 10 major regional markets rose by 4 per cent over the period, compared with 2 per cent in the previous six months, to stand at 9.2 million sq ft. There were distinct regional variations. In Edinburgh, for example, availability rose by almost a third, and in Belfast it was up by 10 per cent. In Birmingham and Bristol, however, the increase was only marginal while in Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham availability fell. Most of the cities surveyed, says DTZ, are short of newly built accommodation but each has a small number of speculative schemes under way to soak up demand.
Take-up fell 5 per cent on the previous two quarters to 3.91 million sq ft - in line with the long-term average of 3.8 million sq ft. Again, there were variations from centre to centre. In Cardiff take-up doubled and in Manchester it grew by a third; Glasgow and Leeds also recorded increases. In the other six cities, however, to a greater or lesser extent demand fell. The corporate and professional services sectors accounted for around a third of all demand over the six-month period and banking and financial services re-emerged as a significant force, accounting for a further 25 per cent. Demand from IT companies, however, fell to just 9 per cent, reflecting the recent difficulties of that sector.
Rents rose in only four of the cities - Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle and Nottingham. Elsewhere they remain stable, except in Edinburgh, where they fell by 3 per cent. Investment in the regional office market amounted to $1.2 billion, a 50 per cent increase on the previous six months. To put this into context, however, investment in the central London office market over the same period amounted to $3.6 billion, three times the total for all 10 regional centres put together.
In a separate study, DTZ reports that the office market in the M25 area around London remained weak in the first quarter of 2002, with availability increasing by another 10 per cent to stand at 7 million sq ft. Of this, almost 55 per cent is newly built or refurbished space. The total amount of speculative space under construction fell to 466,000 sq ft, while take-up fell by more than 50 per cent, from 392,000 sq ft in the last quarter of 2001 to 184,000 sq ft. Rents for prime office space remained static in most sectors of the M25, although in some areas, particularly in the Western M25, there were declines of 1-3 per cent. Investment activity amounted to $132 million - about half the quarterly average since 1997. Nonetheless, DTZ concluded that the M25 market remained reasonably resilient and that it should start to see a pick-up in the second half of the year as business confidence returns.
Warrington to build Europe’s biggest business park
A huge new business park project is planned on the site of a former airfield near Warrington, in the North West of England. The Omega project will cover an area of 558 acres and will be the biggest business park in the UK, and possibly in Europe. It will be bigger than many towns in the area and two-thirds the size of the nearby city of Manchester. The project is backed by landowner English Partnerships, the government’s regeneration agency, and a number of financial partners and developers. It is seen as key to efforts to bring jobs and investment to some of the poorest regions of the North West.
Omega will have a build-out time of 25 years and could eventually create up to 6.9 million sq ft of industrial and office space and 12,000 jobs. There are also plans for live/work units, leisure facilities and hotel and conference facilities. A new junction on the M62 motorway, Junction 8, is due for completion by the end of this year and this will provide access to the site. There is also a road link to the smaller Gemini business park near Warrington. Business sectors targeted by the new site are likely to include telecommunications and pharmaceuticals, in which the region already has a strong base.
Total costs for the 25-year project will approach $1.5 billion, according to Miller Developments, one of the backers, and the park has "enormous potential" to become one of Europe’s most important strategic sites. An outline planning application will be submitted early next year, and work could begin by the autumn. It is thought that phase one of the development could include speculative office developments to the south of the M62 motorway and industrial units to the north. Miller is expected to develop around 200,000 sq ft of speculative office space in the initial phase.
Wales kickstarts broadband revolution
Wales is to invest $150 million in high-speed internet infrastructure, putting itself at the forefront of broadband development in the UK. Broadband Wales, launched by the National Assembly of Wales, will be the biggest publicly funded scheme of its kind, providing affordable broadband access to 310,000 homes and 67,000 businesses. Small companies will be offered high-speed internet access via the Welsh Development Agency and a network will be created to link up to 30 business support centres. A specialist unit will be set up to coordinate the scheme. One-fifth of the funding will come from the European Objective One programme, one-fifth from the WDA and the rest from the Welsh assembly.
The programme will allay fears that Wales is lagging behind the rest of the UK in rolling out broadband services. A recent survey of 19,000 companies, carried out by Strathclyde University in Scotland for the Federation of Small Businesses, found that only 2 per cent of companies in Wales were using broadband, compared with 11 per cent in London.
Meanwhile Oftel, the telecoms industry watchdog, has rejected a parliamentary report calling for the break-up of national telecoms carrier British Telecom. The Commons culture, media and sport committee suggested that BT Group’s domination of the wholesale market for broadband services was stifling competition and that its fixed-line network should be split from its retail business. Oftel, however, dismissed this argument, saying that its own regulatory powers were sufficient to develop a competitive broadband market. BT has been under fire for the slowness with which it has unbundled its local networks for use by rival operators and for price cuts which, it is claimed, threaten to undermine competition. BT reduced its monthly wholesale broadband prices from around $37.50 to $22.12 in February, allowing internet service providers to sell high-speed internet access to the public for around $45 a month.
Liverpool launches new Irish Sea ferry service
A new superferry service has been launched between the Port of Liverpool in North West England and Belfast in Northern Ireland. NorseMerchant Ferries is operating a twice-daily service from Liverpool’s new $37.5 million Twelve Quays River Terminal, making the crossing in just seven hours. The company will soon transfer its existing twice-daily service to Dublin to the new terminal, and also plans to launch a dedicated freight service to Belfast, offering a further 10 sailings a week. Liverpool handles around a third of all Irish Sea freight - 4 million tonnes a year - between Britain and Ireland and also carries some 650,000 passengers.
Meanwhile ABP Connect, part of leading port operator Associated British Ports, has acquired the Hams Hall rail freight terminal at Birmingham in the West Midlands. The terminal is used by the UK’s leading rail freight operator, English Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS), to move freight around the UK and to the Channel Tunnel, providing a fast link with the European rail network.
Kent outstrips investment target
Locate in Kent, the inward investment agency for the Kent and Medway area of South East England, secured 28 businesses and created 1,913 jobs in the past 12 months, exceeding its job creation target by 9 per cent. Last year the agency helped create 1,826 jobs. The total investment of new businesses arriving in the area was estimated at around $66 million over the next three years, and they planned to take up some 238,000 sq ft of office, R&D, manufacturing and distribution space. As well as from the UK, companies came from the US, France, Japan and South Korea.
A new arrival in Kent is US company Iron Mountain, the world leader in records and information management services, which has opened a new multi-million dollar facility at Isis Reach in Belvedere. The company will occupy 140,000 sq ft of a new 240,000 sq ft building and will employ 50 people, in its largest investment to date in the UK. Isis Reach, formerly the site of Belvedere Power station, is a 60-acre regeneration project on the bank of the River Thames. Worldwide, Iron Mountain has 650 record centres, including 31 in the UK, serving 117 separate markets. The company specialises in the storage and management of business and healthcare records, computer back-up media and film and sound archives.
Another flagship development, Chatham Maritime, has been chosen by BT as one of its BTeLocations sites. BT has selected 50 international business sites throughout the UK to be provided with the very latest in high-bandwidth telecommunications infrastructure in a five-year, $75 million programme. The 350-acre Chatham maritime site is managed by the South East of England Development Agency (SEEDA).
Around the regions
The Bank of New York, through its UK subsidiary BNY Securities, is to acquire the back office and settlement capabilities of Tilney Investment Management, based in Liverpool, North West England. The move is part of BNY Securities’ drive to break into the private client stockbroker and investment management markets, and the acquisition will complement its institutional brokerage and clearing services for the European market. The Bank of New York, founded in 1784, is the US’s oldest bank. It has assets of over $76 billion.
Shanghai Foreign Investment Development Board (SFIDB), the investment agency of the Shanghai Municipal Government, has opened its first European representative office in London. The office will assist Chinese companies seeking to locate in Europe, as well as European companies interested in investing in the Shanghai region of China.
ICT Group, a Newtown, Pennsylvania-based provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software, has opened a new European headquarters in Uxbridge, to the west of London. The new headquarters building will also house a contact centre. More than 300 people will be employed there and extra space has been allowed for future growth.
Financial services provider AWD, based in Germany, has acquired CarringtonCarr, a UK independent financial services company, for around $51 million. Based in Leicester in the East Midlands, CarringtonCarr specialises in the financial and mortgaging sector. It will become a subsidiary of Thomson’s Group, AWD’s British subsidiary.
Simsmetal, an Australian metals recycling, resource recovery and industrial services company, has opened the UK’s first refrigerator recycling plant at Newport, South Wales. The plant will be Europe’s largest dedicated fridge recycling facility, treating around 400,000 domestic and industrial fridges annually and employing 20 people.
About 200 businesses from across the East Midlands attended a conference organised in early July by the East Midlands Development Agency to discuss ways in which the region could develop the motor sport industry. The industry, identified by Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt as a priority for development, is worth $4.6 billion a year to the UK economy. High performance engineering is a key industry cluster in the East Midlands, which is also home to race circuits such as Donington Park in Derbyshire and Silverstone in Northamptonshire. The region considers the industry crucial to its future development.
Zoologic Inc of New York, a provider of web-based financial courseware, reference tools and educational materials for financial professionals, has opened an office in London. The company plans to expand its presence over the next six to nine months, taking on staff to handle sales, service and training.
Derwent Information, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Thomson Corporation, has opened a new office in Glasgow, Scotland, creating 51 new jobs for science graduates. The Thomson Corporation provides integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. Derwent Information is a leading patent and scientific information provider, supplying Fortune 500 companies with technical, scientific and business information.
Wily Technology, a provider of performance management software for enterprise web applications, based in Burlingame, California, has opened a sales office at Staines, near London’s Heathrow airport, to cover the Europe, Middle East and Africa market.
Computational science company Accelrys, based in San Diego, has opened a new European headquarters in Cambridge, Eastern England. The company provides R&D software for the pharmaceuticals and chemicals sectors and was drawn to Cambridge by its concentration of technology and biotechnology companies. It will centralise a number of existing smaller operations at the new site.
SMTEK Europe, based in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, has signed a $2.25 million agreement to produce test diagnostic instruments for Doble Engineering of Boston, Massachusetts. Doble Engineering supplies diagnostic equipment and services to the electricity industry worldwide. SMTEK will supply it with test units for power system simulators for the UK, European and other markets.
Also in Northern Ireland, Isardata Software Quality Engineering of Wolfratshausen, Germany, is investing more than $850,000 to set up a software testing and development operation at Down Business Centre in Downpatrick. Isardata’s special area of expertise is software quality assurance and testing. It supplies services and products, such as its automated testing software suite TestOffice, to major European companies, including Siemens, Deutsche Post and Lufthansa.
A new study of the plastics, polymer and rubber sector in the Wolverhampton and Telford High Technology Corridor in the West Midlands is now available online at www.telford.uk.com/polymers, the website of the Telford Development Agency. The industry is well established locally, involving more than 200 companies with a number of distinct clusters. Local agencies are working to promote the region as a centre of excellence for the plastics and polymers industry.