Stewart and Shields has been awarded by Riverside Inverclyde (Ri), the organisation charged with delivering the economic redevelopment of Inverclyde in the west of Scotland, the £1.6 million design and build construction contract for its food and drink incubator.
Baker Street Food & Drink Enterprises will be built on land recently cleared at the corner of Greenock’s Baker Street and Drumfrochar Road. It is the second phase of a £2.5 million road realignment project currently being delivered by Riverside Inverclyde for Inverclyde Council.
The Baker Street project will see the development of six manufacturing units ranging from 30 to 70 square metres. Aimed at enticing the growth of small and medium-sized food and drink businesses, the building will also include shared office space, storage unit and boardroom facilities for its tenants as well as shower and change areas.
Ri will also provide a business growth programme to support the tenants, as well as seeking match-funding support for machinery and equipment. By assisting with the transition into Baker Street, the aim is to provide support towards achieving Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) standard accreditation for the units.
“Ri has targeted the food and drink sector as a fantastic growth opportunity for Inverclyde,” said Andrew Bowman, Head of Business Investment at Ri. “We have started to promote this pioneering facility nationally and are already seeing interest in the Baker Street hub and all of the available support for the eventual tenants. The incubator offers Inverclyde some exciting opportunities, not least the ability to grow the number of food and drink producers in the area alongside the associated jobs. We hope to see some of the early participants grow to become great success stories in their own right.”
The Baker Street incubator and its other areas of support will be the first of its kind in Scotland, assisting Inverclyde’s growth in the food and drink sector as Scotland aims to double its turnover to £30 billion by 2030. The development started in October 2018 and is expected to be completed in the summer of 2019.
The development is due to begin this autumn with a completion date of spring 2019. The Baker Street incubator is being supported by £900,000 from the Scottish Government’s Regeneration Capital Grant Fund (RCGF).
