Wales is a company whose rationale is profit, whose mission is excellence and whose markets are global. Its business is science. This statement may come as some surprise to those who associate the Principality of Wales with traditional working class industries and the picturesque peaks of Snowdonia, but it is the message the Welsh Development Agency is pushing to promote the Welsh economic revival. Nowadays only 2% of the Welsh workforce is employed in coal and steel, whereas over 10% are now employed in the fields of electronics, engineering and biotechnology. In a bid to foster scientific business the Agency intends to target key technologies in Wales and help them to become commercially viable. One part of this programme is the assistance of technological growth with seed finance from the Welsh Development Fund. This Fund can offer development operations located in Wales a UKP150,000 loan to develop an idea to the commercial stage when private venture capitalalists are happy to step in. Valleys Initiative The second part of the programme is the planned UKP2.5m Quality Enterprise Design Centre which comes under Welsh Secretary Peter Walker’s UKP500m Valleys Initiative. The centre will offer a one stop product development service, providing assistance and support to both entrepreneurs with start up projects and to established companies with new product ideas. The centre will be situated seven miles outside Cardiff (just minutes from the M4) and so will be easily accessible. It is expected that customers for the Centre will be drawn from consumer goods manufacturers and the industrial and engineering sectors who will come there to work on market research, design, simulation, the building of demonstrator prototypes, and the promotion and marketing of products. Another part of the Agency’s programme is the announcement of centres of research. The first three of these were revealed yesterday: two of the centres are within the Department of Materials Engineering at University College, Swansea. The first of these is the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Materials for High Performance Application funded by a UKP4m grant from the Science & Engineering Research Council which will open in the autumn and will concentrate on high performance metallic and ceramic applications. The second centre, the Polymer Engineering Centre will concentrate on the more low-tech world of polymers, is funded by a UKP400,000 grant from WINtech (the technology arm of the Welsh Development Agency) and opens on April 1. To prove the Agency’s commitment to North Wales the third and most intriguing centre of excellence will be at the University College of North Wales and will focus on Structural Biocomposites. The scientists at this centre will work on the development of new composites from plant fibre that will be comparable to man-made fibre but far cheaper, lighter and environmentally friendlier than say carbon or glass fibre. Furthermore, according to project leader Dr James Bolton, when this manufacturing process takes off it will enable the farming communities in places like North Wales to replace surplus food crops with fibre crops such as flax and so help regenerate small rural communities. All in all, the Welsh Development Agency’s science strategy is probably best summarised by the gritty statement from one Swansea professor that we are trying to stop being poor Welshmen. If the pride of Cymru and firm determination decide the issue then Wales may yet lead the world in new material technologies. – Katy Ring
