Work has got underway started on a new £10.7m office development for SMEs on the University of Essex’s Colchester Campus which is the largest headquarters-style office currently under construction in the Eastern region. The new Grade A building at the Parkside Office Village on the Knowledge Gateway research and technology park at the university involves almost 42,000 sq ft of new space and will be ready for occupation in 2023. The new building will provide opportunities for businesses to move to the campus and take advantage of links to the university’s researchers, graduate and ...
Read more...The growth in private business activity in the region slowed to a five month low in May but firms still saw a moderate rise in new orders and many remain upbeat on the outlook for the next 12 months, according to a key survey of purchasing managers.
The NatWest East of England PMI business activity index fell from 57.1 in April to 51.7 in May; the second month running the growth rate has slowed. Although confidence weakened as economic concerns mount, a future activity index for the region covering the next 12 months registered well over 60 (where 50 denotes growth).
Firms linked optimis...
Read more...The East of England secured 40 foreign direct investment projects last year, the same number as the pre-pandemic level of 2019 but below the total of 54 attracted to the region in 2020. The key sectors for inward investment across the region were agri-food (seven projects), health, life sciences and social work (seven) and transportation manufacturers and suppliers (seven).
The digital sector, which was the leading sector for investment into the East in three of the last five years, had only six projects in 2021, down from 12 in 2020. But the 40 projects secured in the East was well abov...
Read more...Digital infrastructure group CityFibre is set to invest £15m in a new full-fibre network in Great Yarmouth which it says will bring fast and reliable internet services within reach of nearly every home and business in the Norfolk seaside town. Construction on the town’s full fibre network - which carries data at light speed - will begin this winter and will give users speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps for upload and download, near limitless bandwidth and connectivity. CityFibre area manager Charles Kitchin said: “The next chapter in Great Yarmouth’s story starts here. Our builders will...
Read more...Plans have been unveiled to build the UK’s largest indoor ‘vertical farm’ on a disused warehouse site in Newmarket which will be able to grow up to 415 tonnes of food for local people annually. Construction on a first phase involving up to 6,400 sq of growing area in nine-metre-high growth towers will start later this year. A second phase of the private and publicly funded scheme is planned to increase capacity to 13,000 sq m and production to over 1,000 tonnes of crops pa. Food producer OneFarm will work with indoor agritech specialist, IGS as well as Suffolk County Council an...
Read more...Directors of the region’s businesses need to be alert to signs of financial distress after the number of firms going into insolvency across the country doubled in Apr...
Investment in the Cambridge office and laboratory property market reached a record of over £1 billion last year - more than seven times the five-year average - drive...
X-on, a cloud telephony company founded in a Suffolk barn 20 years ago which has grown to a £10 million turnover business with 70 staff in Woodbridge, has been acquire...
Norwich, Luton, Ipswich and Cambridge have been ranked among the top 20 best performing cities in the annual Demos-PwC Good Growth for Cities Index . Norwich ranked sixth of...
Small businesses in the East of England have seen a surge in equity investment over the past year as the number of deals has increased and the region has attracted a gr...
Glasswells Home Furnishing Superstore in Bury St Edmunds has unveiled four newly-installed electric vehicle charging points at its site on Newmarket Road. They form par...
Communications agency Pier has won two new renewables sector appointments; for an autonomous wind turbine inspections firm, Perceptual Robotics and the East of England...
Associated British Ports has seen strong growth in the number of leisure boats using its Ipswich Marina and the outlook is buoyant for 2022. Leisure craft use at ABP’...