THE SNP government has given its strongest public endorsement to date of the Intermediary Technology Institutes, the five-year-old Scottish Enterprise-funded initiative designed to cultivate future growth industries in the energy, tech media and lifesciences sectors, writes Colin Donald.
On a visit to monitor progress on two ITI Energy projects in Paisley last week - a wind turbine access system called Orangutan and an on-site pipe manufacturing process called Helipipe - enterprise minister Jim Mather, above, praised the projects as "real manifestations of the collaboration and co-operation the Sottish government has been trying to generate for the last year."
Mather admitted that the ITI concept had been subject to some "early scepticism", but said that the Scottish government wholeheartedly backed the scheme.
"We see the ITIs as a key component in a wider collaboration between government, industry and academia. We look across the world to places where there are successful collaborations and are very keen anything in play that is conducive to making that happen here in Scotland."
Launched in 2003 as a collaboration between Scottish Enterprise and the then Scottish Executive, the ITIs have been been criticised, most recently by the former chairman of the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council Dr Chris Masters, who told the Sunday Herald last month that the private sector was better placed to identify gaps in the market than the ITIs.
Referring to the Orangutan and Helipipe projects, which are being developed in partnership with engineers Doosan Babcock, ITI Energy managing director Duncan Botting said: "We are very pleased at the progress being made in these exciting areas. We are now focusing on moving the programmes forward as quickly as possible."
