LYVA Labs connects bright minds to promote digital innovation in advanced manufacturing

As Liverpool City Region (LCR) celebrates its new Health and Life Science Investment Zone status, LYVA Labs has been promoting digital innovation opportunities in another stand-out regional cluster: advanced manufacturing.

 LYVA Labs brought entrepreneurs, academics, manufacturers, and SMEs together (20th March, at Sci-Tech Daresbury), to explore how emerging digital technologies: virtual reality, artificial intelligence, sensors, digital twins, simulation, and predictive modelling, can give LCR’s advanced manufacturing sector the competitive and sustainable edge.

Paul Tallon, LYVA Labs’ Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Network Manager, said: “Our Digitalisation in Manufacturing Event was an opportunity for network members to collaborate, share experience, and learn. Engineering consultants, Hooper Quinn, STFC (Science and Technologies Facilities Council), Anekanta Consulting, University of Liverpool, and Theorem, talked to our guests about how companies are adopting new digital processes to refine the development cycle and to become more future-proof and digitally driven.”

Attendees enjoyed a tour of Sci-Tech Daresbury’s cutting-edge digital facilities, visiting the Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) - set up by the University of Liverpool in partnership with BAE Systems, and the National Nuclear Laboratory, to solve complex industry problems with digital solutions, and the Hartree Centre which supports businesses and organisations to integrate supercomputing, data science, and artificial intelligence into their operations.

Sci-Tech Daresbury was a perfect location for this event, as its facilities are exemplary in the digital manufacturing space. It is, however, also home to one of the LCR Life Sciences and Healthcare Investment Zone’s key innovation investments: phase two of the Violet development, which will entail a new 60,000 sq ft class 2 laboratory building and a new 23,000 sq ft office building to accommodate further growth on the north of England’s only national science and innovation campus. It will ultimately deliver 70,000 sq m (750,000 sq ft) of new laboratories, offices and technical facilities, helping to meet the growing demand for high-quality workspaces for high-growth science, technology, and innovation-led businesses in the region.

John Leake, Business Growth Director, Sci-Tech Daresbury, said:

“We were pleased to welcome so many great manufacturing companies from LYVA Labs’ Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Network to our facilities. This a very exciting time for our campus following the recent Investment Zone announcements and events like today demonstrate the wide variety of companies that Sci-Tech Daresbury is the perfect home for.

“Our campus is suitable for companies in engineering technologies, instrumentation, industrial digitisation technologies, and sustainability/ renewable solutions. The innovative entrepreneurs that form LYVA Labs’ network are precisely those we’d like to attract to this facility and collaborate with and hope this is the beginning of some great new relationships.”

More about Violet Phase 2 at Sci-Tech Daresbury: Sci-Tech Daresbury - one of the North’s most important clusters of innovative technology companies - has received reserved matters planning approval from Halton Borough Council for Violet Phase Two, a c.£24 million speculative development. This exciting new development will be part of the Liverpool City Region’s Life Sciences and Healthcare Investment Zone.