Companies currently based at Norwich Research Park, whether spinouts, spin-ins or start-ups, have collectively achieved over £100m of funding, raised from public funds and private investors.
Tropic, which has been based at the campus for ten years in 2026, has been one of the most successful in attracting investment. It has grown from its three original employees to around 150. Over the last 5 years it has raised a total of $85m/£62m to fund its R&D and last year it unveiled its first commercial product, a gene-edited non-browning banana. This attracted the attention of Time magazine which named it as one of the best inventions of 2025.
Sustainable dye company Colorifix is another campus success story. It has raised $49.4m/£37m since it set up in Norwich and has grown its workforce to over 100.
To ensure that this momentum continues, Anglia Innovation Partnership (AIP), the campus management organisation at Norwich Research Park, set up an incubation programme to help nurture the establishment of new companies founded by researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs on campus.
In 2025 it provided tailored support to 17 companies in areas such as funding, intellectual property (IP) protection, patents, marketing as well as a selection of community programme events for these founders. And to support start-ups in their efforts to establish proof of concepts for their ideas, over the last four years, £650,000 has been awarded in pre-seed funding from Anglia Innovation Partnership’s Pre-Seed Enterprise Fund.
AIP is also providing business support to a further 40 early-stage companies as part of its Campus Enterprise Strategy.
And it’s not just venture capital funding that Norwich Research Park companies are securing, investment is also being achieved in the form of corporate partnerships through industry connections.
Demonstrating this is Ikarovec, that has been based at Norwich Research Park for over five years. It has developed a single-treatment solution for intermediate age-related macular degeneration (AMD), that, untreated, can lead to severe vision loss.
As well as raising around £8m in funding from the private sector it recently announced a new worldwide agreement with VectorBuilder, a global leader in gene delivery technologies, that could reach a market worth over $1bn when it launches in the next few years. That is because intermediate AMD is a large, untapped market for which currently there are no approved drug treatments.
Companies such as TraitSeq have successfully partnered with Syngenta. Our start-up companies benefit from working with multinational partners through the access they get to global networks and facilities.
Another great example of a company that moved to Norwich Research Park to make things happen is Alora. Its founders relocated to Norwich Research Park in February 2024, following a successful Seed raise ($4.4m/£3.3m), to further the development of a strain of rice which will grow on the surfaces of the world’s oceans. It has enjoyed great success in trials where its gene-edited rice crops delivered impressive results for yield, heat tolerance and saline soil.
Rory Hornby, COO and co-founder, said, “Moving to Norwich was like strapping a rocket booster to the company and we’ve been able to do more in this chapter than in the previous year and a half.”
Roz Bird, CEO, Anglia Innovation Partnership, said, “With great facilities, and a specialist skills pool, Norwich Research Park is quickly becoming known for its ability to support high-growth companies in agri-food, health, nutrition and the environment. It is great to recognise the level of private investment attracted into our start-ups. This encourages us all to continue to work hard to ensure Norwich Research Park remains one of the very best places to start and grow a company in the global markets we serve.
“We now have a number of companies, on campus, who are in the incubation stage and are getting ready to grow. A lot has been achieved over the last 10 years, and 2026 promises to be another very exciting year for Norwich Research Park.”
