iCAST provides an easy and unique mechanism for industry to access the world-leading expertise and facilities of a consortium of research organisations in order to accelerate the commercial adoption of sustainable technologies. We have been amazed by the response from companies wanting to work with us: since our launch in November 2021 87 member companies ranging from spinouts to high-growth SMEs and multinational corporations have joined iCAST.
Amongst those members are a number of inspirational young entrepreneurs who iCAST is particularly proud to work alongside. For example, Dr Helen Liang, a recent Bath PhD graduate co-founded LabCycle whose vision is to create a circular economy for single-use plastic laboratory waste. iCAST has worked with LabCycle to demonstrate their technology and significantly strengthen their relationship with prospective commercial partners. This has already helped the company secure public and private funds (~£500K), putting LabCycle on a firm path to future success and growth. Overall, the £17M investment in iCAST is forecast to catalyse £50M in R&D and growth by our member companies, leading to significant sustainability, productivity and competitiveness gains.

The key goal of iCAST is to bring together expertise from four diverse research organisations to provide an agile ‘one stop shop’. To make the process accessible and agile for collaborating companies required significant preparation to establish a legal framework between the partners in order to simplify subsequent negotiation of iCAST projects. This effort paid off because we are now able to start collaborations with industry within a few weeks of a first approach.

We have been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm of so many innovative companies to work with us. We have found it very important, particularly with short, focused projects, to plan carefully to deliver realistic project goals. In some of our early projects goalposts moved too much during the project, making it difficult to achieve meaningful results on the timescales required.

One important aspect of iCAST that we are building on through creative workshops, is that our members represent different parts of the value chain and are very keen to work together. By bringing them together in a facilitated, creative environment, with academic expertise, unexpected and fruitful new collaborations have blossomed.

An emphasis on creativity is also promoted within iCAST itself. Our postdoctoral innovators are encouraged to experiment by developing their own ideas for 10% of their time. Already this is leading to a strong sense of collaboration within the team, and some very interesting results. We look forward to developing this aspect further, particularly in the realm of sustainable international development.

We aim to bridge the innovation gap by enabling easy investment in R&D, delivering agile business support to bring innovation to market and offering a platform for collaboration and networking for the sector.
Since iCAST model is working very well in promoting innovation in sustainable technologies, we want to expand its reach by establishing a dedicated £50M unique wet lab facility for the co-location of partners and industry together (including incubation): this will mean an expanded core pool of technical experts and management which will deliver a wider number of collaborative projects and will incorporate and grow the creative activities at the Carriage Works creative hub. All of this will have a national/international impact in the race to net zero.