Unit 9 Med Tech incubator welcomes seventh company born in Birmingham

The seventh Birmingham-born company has entered Birmingham Enterprise University’s award-winning Med Tech incubator, Unit 9.

Birmingham Biotech LTD, which has operations in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the UK, is a manufacturer and supplier of innovative medical diagnostic equipment and devices. He joined Unit 9 to join the ecosystem at Birmingham Research Park that has successfully nurtured high growth companies since 1986.

The Unit 9 Incubator opened in 2022 as a specialized incubator to support emerging companies in the Second City’s thriving medical technology scene. In 2023, it won the prestigious Place-Based Initiative of the Year award from PraxisAuril, the UK’s professional association for knowledge exchange and commercialization between universities and businesses.

Unit 9 was founded as a collaboration between University of Birmingham Enterprise, GBSLEP Growth Hub and West Midlands Combined Authority to support innovation, creativity and growth in the city.

It is part of a unitary ecosystem that surrounds the University of Birmingham campus and provides short-term incubation for tenants, who also benefit from a business support programme, an equipment sharing agreement with the University.

Unit 9 is located at Birmingham Research Park, which has a number of landing spaces for companies looking to locate in Birmingham, including BioHub Birmingham®, which provides cell culture facilities for microbiology work to Unit 9 tenants.

The health and life sciences sector in the Midlands is home to the largest cluster of medical technology businesses in the UK¹and boasts strengths in the 4Ds – diagnostics, devices, digital and data – as well as world-leading research institutes and the clinical infrastructure for large-scale trials.

Angie Reynolds, Chief Operations Officer at University of Birmingham Enterprise commented: “Birmingham is entering a new era of healthcare innovation. We created Unit 9 as a space to complement the existing infrastructure for translational work in the city, and Birmingham Biotech is a perfect fit for the incubator, which has already benefited six other Birmingham-born companies.”

Birmingham Biotech managing director Michael Hsu said: “The Unit 9 incubator is the perfect laboratory space for us. It is the right size, low cost and in a good location. It has easy access to the university campus, research departments and hospitals, which will facilitate current and future collaborative research activities. We will also benefit from business support from the University of Birmingham Enterprise and other facilities from BioHub Birmingham.”