Industry News
STFC: The ESA Business Incubation Centre Harwellis ‘looking for innovative entrepreneurs & young companies that could benefit from a unique and focused package of technical expertise and business support to turn space technologies and 'know-how' into marketable new products in non-space fields’.
Successful applicants to the ESA BIC Harwell will benefit from an impressive support package, which includes up to £41.5k towards the protection of intellectual property, design, prototyping and market studies. The next deadline for proposals is 5 September 2011.
MoD: Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) has announced that it will develop a national prime contract worth up to £950m to manage its 240,000-hectare UK training estate. DIO will be inviting expressions of interest from potential bidders for the new contract.
The National Training Estate Prime (NTEP) contract will deliver management of training areas, camps & ranges (including air weapons ranges) in the UK when the current arrangement starts to expire in 2013. Some sites will follow in 2014 and beyond. Key sites will include Salisbury Plain Training Area, Catterick Training Area, Sennybridge, and Otterburn.
BIS: Local enterprise partnerships were given extra help recently when they received a share of the £5m start up fund to get up & running. Partnerships were asked to bid for a share of the funding which will help them finance things such as training & other initial costs as they work towards establishing themselves.
The Government received 32 proposals from the partnerships, totalling £5.5m. Of the bids received, 18 partnerships have been offered their bid in full and 14 have been offered a reduced amount.
MoD: Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) has announced the 3 bidders short-listed for a new national contract to provide the Armed Forces and their families with housing services. The National Housing Prime will start in 2013, providing repairs & maintenance to more than 49,000 UK military homes, grounds maintenance & housing construction projects with an individual value of up to £3.93m.
BIS: As part of a tour of the North East to look at the economic impact of moving to a low carbon economy, Vince Cable visited Applied Superconductor Ltd (ASL) – based in Blyth, Northumberland and inspected the Superconducting Fault Current Limiter. The renewable energy device can save the energy industry over £600m in reduced capital costs, cutting carbon emissions by 37m tonnes by 2020.
