Support for small companies event, Edinburgh

More than 70 small companies in the Scottish chemical industry are converging on Edinburgh today for a conference.

The "Support for Small Companies" event has been organised by the RSC and will be held between 6pm and 9.30pm at Our Dynamic Earth, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh. (presentations begin at 7pm)

More than 100 delegates from across Scotland are expected at the conference, including representatives from the Scottish Industrial Symbiosis Programme (SISP) and Envirowise.

The event is also supported by Scottish Enterprise, the Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network, Connect Scotland and ScotCHEM.

Caroline Strain, chemicals team leader at Scottish Enterprise, is one of the guest speakers at the event, and will discuss local support for small chemical businesses in Scotland.

She said: "The event gives delegates the opportunity to hear about the range of support available and will provide excellent networking for the sector.  With around 85% of Scottish chemical companies in the SME category it is vital that we support small to medium sized enterprises in the sector to ensure a vibrant and competitive chemicals industry exists in Scotland in 20 years time."

Other presentations on the evening will be from Dr Ian Laird - managing director of Nitech Solutions Ltd, Caroline Strain - and Sandy Dobbie - chairman of the Scottish Chemicals Leadership Team. 

Dr Laird's talk will be on how he set up Nitech Solutions - a spin-out company from Heriot-Watt University which explores revolutionary mixing technology that enables smaller scale continuous manufacturing methods.

Mr Dobbie will give a brief overview of the new chemicals strategy for the sector in Scotland which aims to ensure a vibrant and competitive chemicals industry exists in the country in 20 years time.  

He said: "This event is a really good way of bringing together the chemical science sector in Scotland under one roof. It's a great forum for exchange of ideas and we hope it will help smaller science-based businesses develop faster here in Scotland.and perhaps it may even be the stimulus for a new business being born."

Melanie Washington, the RSC's industry specialist, said: "The Royal Society of Chemistry is proud to support small businesses in the Scottish chemical industry.

"We hope this event will help small to medium enterprises across the sector find out what support there is available to them as well as providing valuable networking across the industry."

The next event in this series will take place in Cardiff on the Wednesday 17 January 2007.