Bruntwood SciTech boosts funding facilities

An additional £100m package from Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds, NatWest and Santander UK has taken the group’s total facilities to £580m.

Bruntwood SciTech’s financial package has been extended to three years and consists of a £530m investment facility – of which £450m is a term loan and £80m a revolving credit facility – and a £50m development facility.

Specific to its plans in the North West, this funding will support the completion of development works at No.3 Circle Square on Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor knowledge quarter, further refurbishments at Alderley Park; and the 90,000 sq ft redevelopment of Pall Mall on King Street Manchester,.

Continued investment into the Sister innovation district, a £1.7bn joint venture with The University of Manchester, will also benefit. Consultation was started in February on the first 500,000 sq ft of development.

Set up as a developer of city-wide innovation ecosystems around science and tech, Bruntwood SciTech aims to create a £5bn UK platform of specialist workspace by 2033.

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The business is a joint venture between Bruntwood, L&G and Greater Manchester Pension Fund. It said that the green funding terms of the refinance aligns with Bruntwood SciTech’s ESG commitments, specifically: improving the EPC ratings of buildings; a year-on-year reduction in carbon intensity; a reduction in embodied carbon across new build developments, and an increase in renewable energy procurement.

On top of the specifics listed above, funding will specifically focus on office and lab space across the six cities Bruntwood SciTech operates in – Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Cambridge – where it has 11 campuses and 31 city centre innovation hubs supporting more than 1,100 startups, scaleups and global businesses.

To underpin its decarbonisation plans, the business now provides 100% renewable energy to all shared spaces across the portfolio, supported through investment in a wind farm in Ayrshire, Scotland.

Lloyds acted as sustainability coordinator. HSBC acted as the facility agent.

Hill Dickinson acted on behalf of the lenders and Addleshaw Goddard for Bruntwood SciTech, with CBRE and JLL providing valuations.

Kevin Crotty, chief financial officer for Bruntwood SciTech, said: “18 months on from announcing that Greater Manchester Pension Fund would be joining the joint venture, and that we’d secured an additional £500m of investment into the business to support growth of the science, tech and innovation sectors, we remain committed to delivering the ambitious development projects needed to help regional innovation clusters grow.

“The continued support of our financial partners in helping us to drive forward this work is hugely appreciated and is a show of confidence in our ability to meet this ambition.

“This funding facility will also enable us to continue putting sustainability at the heart of all our new and ongoing developments. As well as working hard to reduce our own carbon footprint, we’re also helping to make it easier for our customers to do the same. With the new funding, we will be able to move quickly and generate the momentum needed to deliver a more sustainable built environment for businesses to innovate, collaborate and grow within.”

Andy Clarke, director, real estate finance at NatWest, said: “The sustainably linked funding package will support further investment and growth in the science, technology & innovation sector, and will also support Bruntwood with their ambitions for a net zero future.”