Maritime have played a major role in the regeneration of Europe’s largest science park, managing the day-to-day running of the site and creating a strategic masterplan for its ongoing development.
Discovery Park in Sandwich, Kent, is a global leader for science and enterprise, with world-class laboratories and exceptional office space.
The site has a track record for drug research and development stretching back to the 1950s.
Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, spent almost a billion pounds developing the campus, but for commercial reasons had reduced their workforce to a skeleton staff, leaving much of the site available for other commercial uses.
The 230-acre Discovery Park site has 3 million sq ft of buildings, warehouses, laboratories and office space, which meant other businesses and organisations could move in to take advantage of the site and its infrastructure.
The original developers bought the site from Pfizer for a pound, converting some of the laboratory space into offices and creating the beginnings of a commercial campus.
Our clients then bought Discovery Park for £20 million and in February 2017 Maritime Capital were appointed asset managers, with Toby Hunter appointed CEO and Max Hunter heading up the investment team.
Over the course of a challenging and rewarding two-year engagement, Maritime developed exciting new areas and developed sustainability and placemaking initiatives, including a retail park, vertical farm and drug manufacturing facilities.
A development site to the south of the park which had planning permission for 500 homes was also purchased for £10 million.
We directly managed a team of 150 people that maintained the entire Discovery Park campus, providing logistical services to tenants such as pharmaceutical companies, dynamic start-ups and scientific research enterprises.
Part of our work involved finding tenants to lease office and lab space, as well as servicing existing tenants on the park.
We quickly became au fait with the needs of scientific and research businesses, dealing with matters such as science-grade building management and water filtration systems.
But unusually, the purchase agreement also included the site’s autonomous water, power and heating networks, with all of the attendant pipes, wires and infrastructure.
The project saw us running a wastewater treatment plant, sewage system and power network, significantly expanding our skillset.
Maritime Capital also made a major investment in an energy service company (ESCO) that runs a biomass combined heat and power plant selling renewable heat and electricity to the park.
All surplus energy is then sold to the electricity grid to power homes across the region.
Within the period of our strategic asset management, the site went from a capital value of £20m to more than £75m.
Discovery Park continues to be at the forefront of innovation, from pioneering life science research to developing new antibiotics and diagnostics and unlocking the potential of immunotherapy and immuno-oncology.
Maritime is now solely focused on developing the Discovery Park masterplan, whilst retaining our flourishing investment in Kent Renewable Energy.
