AberInnovation: The Development Hub

Innovation in the Heart of Wales

The Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus (AberInnovation) provides a focal point for a community of ambitious, collaborative companies of all sizes to advance the development of new products and processes in agri-tech, food and drink and the bio-economy.

AberInnovation creates an environment where product development and business growth is frictionless. This is made possible by a strong community of world-leading experts and world-class businesses who share a common purpose in a common location at Aberystwyth University’s Gogerddan site famous for crop and livestock science.

Aberystwyth University academics have been at the forefront of meeting societal and environmental challenges for decades, including food and water security, climate change mitigation, and renewable energy. Our new campus allows this vital work to continue at the cutting edge of new technologies and with some of the country’s most innovative companies.

Development Facilities for Industry Collaboration

AberInnovation offers five technical zones, custom-designed for collaborative agri-food and circular economy R&D.

Our Biorefining Centre is a pilot-scale facility for extracting, analysing and optimising chemicals from biomass and waste stream materials, with co-located industrial biotechnology and a food-grade environment. The food-grade environment is integrated with the Future Food Centre, for the testing, validation and improvement of existing and novel materials as foods including nutritional content, advanced compositional analysis, shelf life and consumer preferences. Sensory testing booths and a dedicated kitchen allow real-time responses to sensory properties of novel foods.

Both of these centres are supported by the first-floor Advanced Analysis Centre offering bespoke facilities for supporting analytical needs and advanced compositional testing in bioprospecting, bioprocessing and fermentation process support. On the same site, the Seed Biobank houses more than 35,000 seed varieties collected from all corners of the world for over 100 years and stored in controlled environments. The front door to all of these facilities is provided by the Campus’s Innovation Hub and its array of meeting, conference and networking spaces – an incubator for innovation-led companies.

Incubating Innovation - BioAccelerate

Commitment to fostering entrepreneurship and supporting innovation that delivers continues unabated at AberInnovation. Following two successful pilot programmes, our flagship investment-readiness programme, BioAccelerate, is back in 2020 and this time boasting a two-phase programme with awards of up to £50,000 for the strongest business ideas. Seeking ambitious innovators with game-changing ideas, BioAccelerate 2020 will first equip participants with everything they need for their slide deck and first pitch over a 13-week accelerator programme.

Phase 2 sees the best six participants or teams given the investment, expertise and facilities needed to develop their propositions into fully-fledged business plans. The culmination of all this hard work sees them pitch on the final day to a panel of industry experts and venture capital investors, hoping to secure one of two £50,000 awards to bring their idea to fruition.