A NEW centre aimed at helping companies and researchers to prove biotechnology breakthroughs are commercially viable already has a years worth of work on its books.

The £12m expansion to the National Industrial Biotechnology Facility (NIBF), the Government's first elite technology innovation centre, officially opened yesterday by science minister David Willetts, will give small companies access to expertise and equipment they would otherwise struggle to afford.

Nigel Perry chief executive of the The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) which runs the facility at its Wilton Centre, near Redcar, said it already had 12 months of contracts on its books, with the first work due to start in about four week.

A number of the organisations involved are consortiums between the private sector and universities, which have won funding in a £2.5m Technology Strategy Board (TSB) competition.

The facility will enable companies who pay to use it to try out processes for a fraction of the cost of building a facility of their own or as a product manufacturing facility for smaller ventures.

It will enable businesses to prove their work is commercially viable before bigger companies invest large sums of money in it.

Ian Shott, chairman of the industrial biotechnology leadership forum, said: "If it didn't exist companies would be faced with spending £10m to build a bit of equipment.

"It is proving the technology can work in a commercial way. In order to convince anyone to invest, any really big investor, they need to believe it can work on a bigger scale, the commercial sector works in tonnes.

"The previous facilities could go to around 100kg, this new facility allows you to go to several tonnes.

"Biotechnology isn't new, we have been making wine since Roman times, beer for a similar period and antibiotics since Fleming almost 100 years ago.

"What we are looking at is how to make biotechnology versitile, not just starting with expensive ingredients but rubbish from the municipal station."

Mr Shott said the timing of the facility's opening couldnt be better with rising oil prices, an increasing desire of companies to work sustainably and new carbon tariffs making biotechnology more competitive.

Mr Perry added: "The North-East has a massive process industry.

"I believe it is absolutely vital that we have a national centre here. I think this is great news.

"I think the get up and go approach the North-East has got and nurtured over the last nine to 10 years is beginning to pay dividends.

"We have got the foundations that we have got to build on and keep that momentum going."

Mr Willetts, who was given a tour of the new facility, said: "It is absolutely essential that the bright ideas from universities get developed and turned into businesses here."