Lancaster Environment Centre

Enterprise & Business Partnerships work with business and industry and our colleagues in the Lancaster Environment Centre through 6 key programmes:

A third phase of capital development of the Lancaster Environment Centre now provides dedicated facilities for companies to co-locate within the Environment Centre. Larger companies will be provided with the opportunity to develop collaborative research teams with the University and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and smaller companies can completely re-locate into the facility.

The co-location team is led by Chris Holroyd within the Lancaster Environment Centre.

Many businesses require rapid, high quality and independent advice on technological, legal and regulatory issues. EBP facilitates consultancy using our knowledge base to a wide range of business clients using a talented group of graduate consultants. We now place over 30 students a year with businesses to work on technology-based projects and projects to improve business resource use efficiency.

All students are following postgraduate Masters programmes within the departments of Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences and Geography and these projects form an integral part of their training.Our latest cohort of students have just started their placements within businesses.

The Graduate consultancy programme is led by Mike Entwistle within the Lancaster Environment Centre.

Our affinity group programme brings together like-minded companies working together to exploit the opportunity for a new environmental product or service or on non-competitive issues such as improved resource use efficiency. Many of our affinity groups are established after initial attendance at our extensive industry events programme.

We develop and run a number of training programmes for several commercial organisations. Current training programmes include residential and one day workshops on food safety in food crop production, product stewardship for the chemicals industry, contaminated land assessment & remediation and a new CPD postgraduate programme on the European regulatory framework for chemical users, producers and importers.

The CPD Programme is led by Mark Bacon within the Lancaster Environment Centre.

Many of the outcomes of our research have commercial relevance and we are keen to see these translate into commercial success. Working closely with the University's Business Enterprise Centre EBP identify and develop commercial ideas arising out of research, often in partnership with businesses wishing to exploit our technologies and services. We have recently been successful in gaining follow-on funding to commercialise the outcomes from NERC funded science at Lancaster.

We also work closely with individuals from outside of the university with new and exciting ideas to exploit the environmental market. Each year we run a business creation competition - with the lucky winners receiving all the help and advice (as well as an office) to get their business off to a flying start.

The New Venture Creation Programme is led by Chris Holroyd within the Lancaster Environment Centre.

Some of our most recent and ongoing developments have centred around the launch of collaborative research ventures with specific commercial organisations or the development of new applied research centres to conduct research on behalf of particular industries. The Waitrose Centre, brings together academic researchers at Lancaster with Waitrose supermarkets and their supply chain.

The N8 centre for Sustainable Water Use is one of 5 research centres spanning the 8 northern research intensive Universities in England and will focus on the development of a medium-to-long term agenda for research for sustainable water use, working closely with United Utilities, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian water, LECs Centre for Sustainable Water Management and researchers across the Universities of Durham, Liverpool, Leeds, York, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield.

Finally, the REACH centre, launched in June 2007, brings together university expertese into a consortium of external partners to deliver technical and consultancy services to chemical users and producers. This new collaborative centre aims to exploit the opportunities of early compliance with the EU REACH directive which governs the safe use and production of chemicals in all member states of the EU.