TWELVE skilled jobs have been saved in St Andrews by a technology firm backed by the town’s university.
Drochaid Research Services has taken on employees of Sasol UK following the closure of the St Andrews laboratory that was funded by the South African oil and gas firm.
The University of St Andrews provided a £700,000 financial package for Drochaid and the promise of access to research equipment.
It said Drochaid will carry out contract research and development in the areas of catalysis, materials science and chemical technology.
The company’s managing director, Professor Robert Tooze, said: “The need for the efficient utilisation of both materials and energy in the products that we all rely on is increasingly well understood. Catalysis is a key enabling technology in this process.”
He added: “We are already getting significant industrial interest and further building our links with academia, both nationally and internationally.”
The company is expected to benefit from an ongoing partnership with the University of St Andrews where it is based.
Sasol’s decision to provide £5 million support to open a laboratory at St Andrew in 2002 represented a notable vote of confidence in the university.
The company wanted to tap into the expertise held in the university to develop ways of making the fuel production process more efficient and environmentally friendly.
It considered eight other locations.
The laboratory was initially expected to employ 25 people, mostly at PhD level.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here